The Avoid List

By: Jera Jones

October 11, 2009

People who eat food adulterated by the food conglomerates tend to be heavier than their primitive relatives. They have more problems with their teeth and gums. Their bones are weaker. They are more prone to degenerative diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and arthritis. This was proved in 1939 by Dr. Weston A. Price D.D.S. in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects. Retraining the tastes to hunger for natural foods is imperative, then, for life, health and happiness.

Humans have food taboos, but we also have the ability fo free ourselves from irrational entrenched food taboos, and retrain ourselves with a rational avoid list. A toddler will put anything in it's mouth, but an older child has been taught to avoid certain things. These learned avoids will stay with him or her for life and be passed on to her own children unless they are thoughtfully reevaluated. Do you feel free to enjoy a platter of fresh ripe fruit? Remarkably, many children are socialized against freely eating fruit. I remember reprimanding my oldest child for giving my fruit away to the neighbor children. Now she eats very little fruit and it is probably my fault! How nice it would have been to have had a prolific fruit tree which would have made such gifts joyful for everyone concerned! Some people have been conditioned against eating anything fresh and raw. In a former age in some parts of the world, fresh manure was used to fertilize vegetables. This can result in disease being contracted by eating uncooked vegetables. (Manure from any source -- animal or human -- must be aged for several months before it can safely be used on vegetables close to harvest.) How much healthier we are having a taboo against using fresh manure on vegetables than having one against eating fresh food! The contemporary agricultural sector is well aware of the danger of using fresh manure on food crops, and there are laws that protect us from such practices, but sometimes taboos from an older culture die out slowly. If you have an emotionally based reluctance to eating fresh food, take a little at a time. Don't force yourself, but do try a little piece of fresh fruit or a little piece of fresh vegetable, then give yourself time to experience any reaction to it before trying again with a little bit more, working up gradually to larger and larger portions.

The avoid list is a principle of conduct. It is difficult at first, but it becomes progressively easier. There are many things that might be added to the list: things like salt, preservatives, artificial colors, genetically modified food, feed lot beef and dairy, and so forth. If you are new to the idea, start out by avoiding the three most detrimental things that the industrialized culture has done to food: (1) refined and artificial sweeteners, (2) refined (white) grains, and (3) hydrogenated oil or trans fat.

Instead of sugar or sugar sweetened drinks and desserts, sweet fruits in their fresh raw state should be eaten. In the beginning of the change effort, dried fruit, fruit juice, malt syrup, honey, and even raw sugar or raw sugar syrup can be chosen instead of sucrose, and stevia can be used in the place of artificial sweeteners. Fruit juice sweetened cake, cookies and candy can be found in many stores, or can be made by substituting ingredients in standard recipes. High fructose corn sweetener is a completely adulterated and refined sugar and should be avoided. If you need to transition yourself or someone near and dear off of soda, mix fruit juice concentrate with club soda, then gradually switch to fresh fruit.

Nutritious starch foods to choose instead of refined wheat bread, pasta, pastries or white rice include starchy vegetables such as potatoes, yams and winter squash, whole grain breads, whole grain pasta, whole grain pastries, brown rice, wheat or rye berries, oats, millet, quinoa, corn or amaranth. Whole wheat tortillas or corn tortillas should be chosen over white tortillas, even if they make poorer burritos. During the processing of wheat into flour or couscous the bran and germ portions of the germ are removed, losing most of the protein, most of the fiber, most of the vitamins (chiefly B complex and Vitamin E), and most of the minerals originally in the wheat. The same losses happen when brown rice is stripped of it's bran layer in order to produce white rice. Additionally, white flour is usually bleached with chlorine gas producing small amounts of a potent toxin, alloxan, which produced diabetes in laboratory animals. Wall paper paste is also made from the same refined, bleached wheat flour served as food. Refined wheat products line the colon with a gluey residue that distends the abdomen as more and more wall paper paste is lain down against the colon wall with each meal of refined bread, tortillas, pasta, cookies or cake. To begin to clean up the residue, stop adding to it with more refined foods, and add more fiber to your diet in the form of fresh green salads. Although adding oil to salads will boost your calorie percentage from fat above the ideal, olive oil is one of the foods that will help clean the years of debris in the colon, and the lettuce leaves in the salad will help transport it to the colon where it can do some good (although oils, even relatively healthful ones, should be used sparingly if at all).

Seeds, nuts, olives and avocados provide a healthy source of fat. Fat should be a small portion of the diet, possibly as low as 10% of total calories consumed -- certainly less than 25% -- should be calories from fat. Dressings, chips, baked goods and other products are available in most stores that are free of hydrogenated oil, refined flour or refined sugar. Read the ingredients lists until you graduate to all fresh food. Processed foods that do not contain hydrogenated oil, refined sugar, or refined flour can help you change to natural foods at the beginning of your transition effort. However, be aware that eating processed foods or adding oil to salads can easily boost the percentage of dietary fat well beyond 25%.