Recently, my husband and I gave a Wellness Nutrition talk at a local school to a mixed group of students, teachers and parents. The title was “Nutrition for Achieving Optimal Health and Peak Performance.”
About halfway into the talk we were giving examples of healthy snacks the kids could have at school as opposed to all the junk they were used to eating. One particular food we mentioned was raw almonds… a personal favorite of mine!
One of the kids in the audience asked a good question that led to an even greater lesson. He said, “I have diabetes, and I’ve heard that almonds and cinnamon are good for diabetes. Is this true?”
The poor kid had no idea the can of worms he had just opened up!
First, almonds and cinnamon are good foods. The cleaner they are (organic, raw) the better they are. They are real food, so that inherently makes them ‘good’. They’re also, generally speaking, good for everyone because they are real food… not just for diabetics. They are not drugs.
The point to be made is that in the Wellness lifestyle, you can’t look at foods in isolation like that. This kid could have been eating a ton of starchy carbs, very few vegetables, trans fats and drinking pop… yet if he ate almonds and cinnamon it would help his diabetes?! That’s not how it works.
Thankfully, he said he does ‘fairly well’ keeping his diet ‘kinda’ healthy for the most part’. It's a good thing, because the only chance he has of reversing the diabetic situation he has gotten himself into is a complete lifestyle overhaul... the way he eats, moves, and thinks, for starters.
The answer is NOT almonds and cinnamon! Almonds are great, but they are not little miracle nuts! You need a solid foundation first.
But this is how our society thinks, isn’t it? “Eat whatever I want, then just take ‘this’ and I’ll be fine”. For the masses, it’s a drug, or several drugs, that they think will fill the gap left by their incomplete approach to Wellness Nutrition. Unfortunately, with the rise of the health industry in recent years, more and more people are using supplements/vitamins and foods in isolation in the same ineffective way.
Do you see the irony in the scenario of the person at the fast food restaurant who orders all the high fat, high calorie,processed, low nutrient-density ‘food’… in fact, they “supersize” it all… yet they order a diet pop, thinking that somehow makes the meal better or ‘healthier’??? Crazy!
I see the same irony, and sadness, in the way people choose supplements, take their drugs, treat their disease and feed their families.
You can’t ignore the principles of Health and Wellness and achieve optimal health or prevent sickness. Our innate nutritional requirements are for ample pure and sufficient real foods, and little-to-no toxic and deficient foods. This is the one and only formula that produces health.
If you don’t have that basic foundation, you can eat all the almonds and cinnamon you want and it ain’t helping a thing! You can drink all the diet pop you want along with your fast food meals, and you’ll still have excess toxic fat as a result.
The body is not stupid. Its requirements are quite simple, actually. Increase purity and sufficiency – decrease toxicity and deficiency. It just takes a shift in the way we think about food… a shift to a Holistic view… seeing how it all comes together to produce health.
The more you can incorporate this Wellness perspective to your diet, the less you have to worry about individual foods, supplements and drugs to fill in your gaps. In fact, you’ll probably not have many gaps once you make this paradigm shift in thinking!
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