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Nutrition

Nutrition is the pillar of health.

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.

When diet is correct medicine is of no need.

Ayurvedic proverb

The word nutrition does not describe the temporary satisfaction of the feeling of hunger; it comes from the Latin verb ‘nutrire’, which means to suckle, feed, nourish. ‘Nutrire’ comes from the Proto-Indo-European root snā-, meaning “to swim,” with extended form *(s)nāu- “to swim, flow; to let flow,” hence “to suckle. The primary act of suckling is characteristic of the process of nourishment. Nutrition, hence, refers to ‘the process by which organisms absorb their proper food into their systems and build it into living tissue’. ET It describes vividly the flow of nutrients through our blood stream, and their assimilation by our organism for its proper function.

As life and the best function of an organism depend on the appropriate biochemical reactions, it is not so difficult to appreciate the significance of what substances – molecules, we allow to enter our body; it is them that will determine whether an organism’s biological function will be optimal guaranteeing health, or problematic, opening the road to disease. Unfortunately, for reasons we cannot discuss at this point, our modern civilization has developed on the completely perverted view that profit is more valuable than life; as we are being totally alienated from the essence and the act of nourishment, we are finding ourselves submerged in disease.

People spend less and less time and care on their nutrition loosing basic knowledge and understanding of its effects on their bodies and lives. Now food production is not in the hands of individuals and communities, but in the hands of big companies, which are not charities or co-operatives and whose goal is of course to make the biggest possible profit, not to provide people with the best possible nutrition. Thus, as science proves, a vast amount of foodstuffs circulating is inappropriate for eating. Either victims of marketing and lifestyle choices or due to poverty and lack of information and choice, people poison their bodies instead of nourishing them. As a result, reinforced by other toxic factors (e.g. water and air pollution, stress and radiation) there is an outbreak of modern chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, IBS, neurological disorders etc.

Advances in molecular genetics, in particular from 2012 onwards, have raised awareness on the significance of nutrition for health and disease. The voices of doctors and medical scientists on the significance of nutrition are increasing as there is an ever-growing accumulation of data that nutrition controls the gut’s health, whose state controls inflammation, which is the root cause behind most chronic diseases. There is about 40 trillion microorganisms living in and on the human body and most of them consist of our gastrointestinal bacterial load spreading along a surface area of about 300 – 400 m² (our GI tract). About 4 times more than our cells, they are responsible for the assimilation of nutrients and transfer of information from the outside world triggering processes that define our cells’ functions. Science makes two things clear:

• Firstly, nutrition controls whether our gut bacteria is of the good kind or the bad kind.
• Secondly, the highest our bacterial biodiversity, the stronger our immune system. Bacterial biodiversity depends on what we eat, whether we kill all our good bacteria with an excess of antibiotics and whether we expose ourselves to nature’s other organisms, being part of the living community or we live in a ‘sanitised’ environment.

The important discoveries about the role our microbiota plays in our health can be seen in the Human Microbiome Project. iHMP

As we have said, people have their own individual needs depending on many factors. Generalizations can be helpful, but they can also be misleading and inappropriate for individual cases. However, based on the accumulated research, there are some basic facts that apply to everyone:

 

GMO’s, processed foods and Trans fats are strongly linked to fatal diseases.

Sugar, alcohol, soft drinks and industrially produced foods and drinks should be avoided.

Food needs to be as natural as possible; it makes a huge difference whether it is organic or full of pesticides, and whether it is based on heirloom varieties or hybrids. Prefer seasonal and locally produced food.

Plant based foods, especially fresh vegetables, should be the core of our nutrition.