The Value Of Whole Unprocessed Food

Beautiful Farmer's Market Carrots

In yesterdays blog post on "The Perfect Diet" I list three simple recommendations that, in my view, are essential for optimum health and well-being.  My first recommendation is that we make whole unprocessed foods the foundation of our diet.

Whole, unprocessed foods, as opposed to what I like to call "faux foods," are real food.  Real foods are the traditionally raised and prepared meat and animal fats (which contain the highly prized fat-soluble vitamins), fish and seafood, raw dairy products, grains and legumes, vegetables and fruits.  Not surprisingly, these are the very foods that the human race has eaten and sustained itself on for thousands of years.  Unfortunately, the ubiquity of refined and processed foods, laden with unpronounceable preservatives and additives, have become so common place that many of us are tempted to believe that they are just normal everyday food.  Let me dispel that old chestnut once and for all and assure you that for all of the "convenience" of packaged and processed foods their appearance in the human diet is fairly recent and they are a significant "experimental" departure from what has normally nourished and sustained human life.

My first experience with processed food was, not surprisingly, as an infant.  Though I do not remember the episode of making my first food choice I have been told I that when my well-meaning parents tried to coax me into eating processed baby food from a jar (I must have had an uncanny instinct for food even then) that I rejected all offers, locked my jaw, and refused to eat it.  In my own pre-verbal, yet articulate way, I let my folks know fairly clearly that I thought that the morsals of food from their own plate, the scraped apple, mashed potatoes, peas, and bits of meat with gravy, were highly preferable to what was in the "suspect" jars. 

My next significant food moment, and one that I remember well because it changed my life, dates back to my high school days.  During the summer my grandfather began growing a large organic vegetable garden. The produce that he grew tasted like nothing I had ever experienced before.  I enjoyed many meals at Mimi and Papa's house.  My taste buds, trained and educated at their table, would never be the same.  My life was changed.  Organic food was the best food I had ever tasted.  I remember lunches that featured brown rice, cottage cheese, corn on the cob, sliced garden tomato, sliced cucumber, green beans cooked in a little bacon grease, and steamed crookneck squash with plenty of butter.  Did I mention baby beet greens?  Such simple fare but so stunningly delicious.  With that first revelation of what real food could taste like I noticed two things right away, and for a teenager, I might add, that is pretty good.  The food tasted delicious in a way I had never experienced food before.  I left their table with a sense of well-being and noticed that I did not crave my usual sugary afternoon pick-me-up. That was an amazing bit of noticing.

Because of my grandfather's vegetable garden and the organic gardening and prevention magazines that he introduced me to I began to become "food aware" at a fairly early age.  I began to read labels and select foods that did not have preservatives or additives in them.  I began to seek out meats that were raised without hormones.  I began selecting whole grains instead of refined flour products.  I began to cook for myself.  Each baby-step, each infusion of whole, unprocessed food brought immediate and noticeable improvements in my health and well-being.

For a thorough and informative discussion of the value of whole, unprocessed foods I highly recommend reading the preface and introduction to Sally Fallon's cookbook "Nourishing Traditions."

Check out Carrisa's dramatic before and after shots 8 months into eating whole, unprocessed foods.