San Diego Nutrition and Health

A few weeks ago I was listening to a nutrition related talk by Dr. Delia Garcia, a radiation oncologist.  In her talk she said that Americans don’t suffer from a supplement deficiency, rather they suffer from a whole food deficiency.   This may sound a bit startling as one would think that what he is eating is food, but if you start to assess how much of the food the average American eats is over processed and full of chemicals and preservatives there isn’t much that counts as a “whole food.” 

So, what is a whole food?  Basically a whole food is not something that comes from a box or a can designed for long shelf life.  Fruits, vegetables, whole grains such as quinoa, millet, corn, wheat, buckwheat, brown rice, sea vegetables, meat and dairy not treated with hormones or additives would all be considered whole foods.  A whole food doesn’t mean that the food has to be raw.  Cooking your grains or steaming your veggies is fine.  It’s just when we over process our foods and add all the fillers that a whole food becomes a processed food. 

To help you better understand the importance of including whole foods in your diet, take a look at this quote by Jeff Prince, when he was interviewed by The Washington Post in August 2004:  “…the thousands of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals in whole foods act synergistically together to create a more powerful effect than the sum of their parts, producing a result which cannot be recreated by supplements.”  Mr. Prince is the VP for Education at the American Institute for Cancer Research.   

Does this mean you shouldn’t take supplements?  No, not necessarily.  Sometimes we need to fill in the gaps or there may be a time when your body needs an extra dose of a particular vitamin or mineral.  But, what it does mean is that we can’t eat the Standard American Diet and think that by popping a few multi-vitamins we are getting everything our body needs to be healthy.  Supplements are not a replacement for good food, they should be just as the name implies a supplement to a healthy diet. 

What whole food can you enjoy today?