The more you taste foods in their purest form, the more you develop a better appreciation and understanding of the difference between “real” food and “dead” food.

Think of real food as food that gives life. It has the right balance of vitamins and nutrients because it has grown and evolved in nature. Real foods are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, fish – anything that’s life-giving. Real food is often called “whole food” because what you eat is very close to the way it appears in nature.

Dead food is anything that no longer resembles the way it originally appeared in nature. Processing takes most of the nutrients and enzymes out of food. To make up for the loss of nutrients, food manufacturers add synthetic vitamins and minerals. These synthetics are not nearly as healthy or beneficial as their natural counterparts. In fact, they can sometimes be harmful. Processed foods usually have added refined sugar, extra salt, and chemicals used as preservatives and flavor enhancers. This is necessary because processed, dead, de-natured food is also flavorless. Along with being unhealthy, sugar, salt, and chemical enhancers dull your taste buds to “real” flavors. This leads to a greater desire for more processed foods to get the fake taste and satisfaction you now crave.

How much of your food today has been real, whole food? How much has been dead, processed food? Challenge yourself to add more real food (and subtract dead food) from your meals and snacks. Let us know how you’re doing!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 9:55 am and is filed under Articles - Food, Articles - Ten Steps and THM Basics, Detox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.