It's All About The Tao

My Top Ten

I believe that if you get all or most of my top 10 foods as your daily diet you will have complete nutrition. Because none of these foods have been ‘processed’ or should I say ruined by humans they all become super foods in their own way. You will feel alive and you will even feel your energy vibration rising as each of your 67 trillion cells become alive again. Although I have put them in order of importance, they all have a special daily requirement.

1. Avocado
2. Salad
3. 3-6-9 Omega Oil
4. My Nut Bars
5. Vegetables
6. Greens Concentrate
7. Virgin Coconut Oil
8. Probiotics
9. Pineapple and papaya
10. Almonds and Macadamias

Avocado

The single most important food you can eat. For thousands of years the Mayans, Aztecs and Incans believed the avocado to be an aphrodisiac. I believe it. No other food comes complete with everything to sustain life like the avocado. The avocado is high in fat, 60% of the fat is monounsaturated, 20% is polyunsaturated and 20% is saturated. With each avocado averaging about 30 grams of fat, 4.5 g of protein and 12 g of carbohydrate you couldn’t ask for a more perfectly balanced food. Although it has a high fat content it is the good fat and has been proven to lower cholesterol. And let’s not forget a whopping flip-flopping heart stopping 1300mg of potassium. It contains more protein, potassium, magnesium, folic acid, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, pantothenic acid, beta carotene, vitamin E and vitamin K per ounce than any other fruit. The avocado is classified as a fruit because it is the part of the plant that surrounds and contains the seed. But, with its high fat and protein content and the fact that its sugar content decreases as it matures to me it’s more like a seed than a fruit. I believe the avocado is the single most important food you can eat to maintain perfect health and body weight.

Salad

I shouldn’t have to explain why salad came in as #2. To me the ‘raw food’ diet is the most superior form of eating there is and salad is the major contributor in achieving that. It is 100% alkaline-forming and is a huge step toward superior health and longevity.

I will go to the market and buy enough salad ingredients to last me for 6-7 days. When I get home I chop up my salad all at once. It’s enough to make three stainless steel bowls. I like the stainless steel bowls with lids because the bowls hold the cold better than the plastic ones. This way I have salad ready to go at all times. This makes it easy so when I go to eat I don’t have to take the time to cut up a salad. Everyone will make a salad different but I usually make mine the same every time. I just build it in layers and then use tongs when I pull it from the bowls. The order of layers I build my salad is as follows. Romaine or spring mix lettuce, peeled cucumber, zucchini, red peppers, green onion, orange peppers, yellow peppers, White onion and then tomatoes. The bowls are filled to the rims by now but I’m not done yet. I heavily sprinkle organic dulce flakes onto the tomatoes. Dulce is a type of seaweed that I get from the health food store. It usually comes from the eastern shores of Maritime Canada or Maine. There are two reasons why I use dulce flakes. One, it tops the scale in alkaline and the higher the alkaline the better. Two, it has a very good balance of natural minerals most importantly being the salt content. The body can easily identify, digest and assimilate it into to body. When you stop eating fast or processed food you stop overloading your body with sodium. But sodium chloride is very important in the body and there is no better source for salt than seaweed. Finally I sprinkle on some marjoram and then shake the bowls to mix the dulce with the tomatoes and settle the salad so that the lids will fit.

I have salad every lunch and supper. The vitamins and minerals that are in salads are too numerous to mention here but in order to beef up the salads calories I add fat. I always add about a dozen Moroccan dry olives (stay away from the green olives, they have been soaked in lye to remove the bitterness), sesame seeds and either 3 or 4 tablespoons of 3-6-9 omega oil or 3-4 Tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil. I then top it off with half a squeezed lemon or lime which is also very high on the alkaline scale. Delicious...I can feel the spark just thinking of having salad.

This particular salad is also perfectly balanced with taste and flavor.

Sweet – peeled cucumbers, peppers
Sour – Tomatoes, Lemon and Lime Juice
Bitter – Zucchini, Lettuce, sesame seeds
Salty – Olives, Seaweed
Spicy – Onions, Scallion (green onion)

3-6-9 Omega oil

It is so important to get your body back to burning fat as fuel instead of sugar. To do that one of the most important things you can do is add good polyunsaturated oils to your daily diet. The human body cannot make these essential fatty acids (EFA’s) by itself. It must be obtained from food. Refrigerated omega oils is one of the best things you can do for your body to lose weight, regulate your blood sugar and make your salad taste damn good.
Polyunsaturated oils get the GLUT 4 molecules mobile again, they regulate your lipids, cholesterol and keep your body oiled up from the inside out. Before you know it your skin will start to shine and look healthy again.

My Nut Bars

I always call them cookies because they are such a treat but really they are more like the most nutritious energy bar you could ever have. They are a good source of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants...etc. When I eat them I always think I’m cheating myself...until I realize what I’m actually eating. I put nut bars ahead of vegetables because anytime I have a craving for junk these bars will curb it. I really feel they give the avocado a run for its money.

Vegetables

We all know the importance of eating vegetables, our parents made sure of it when we were growing up. Asparagus, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, Eggplant, Peas, Squash and Spinach to name a few. They are all alkaline, full of nutrients and most of all a good source of fibre. Try to find ‘raw recipes’ to eat these vegetables, but if you can’t go raw then just lightly steaming them will have to do. Instead of melting butter or sprinkling oil on them I just spray on ‘Braggs Liquid Soy’. It tastes great and is a good source of amino acids. It’s not like regular soy, Braggs has no alcohol, no preservatives and it hasn’t been fermented.

I stay away from all the regular root vegetables (potatoes, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, turnips...etc). The plant takes all the sugar it manufactures over the summer and stores it at the end of the season into a concentrated package called the root. Although there are about 70 different carbohydrates we usually break them down into three categories, monosaccharide’s (simple one sugar molecules like glucose and fructose ), disaccharide’s ( two sugar molecules like lactose ) and polysaccharide’s ( aka complex carbohydrates known to have plenty of monosaccharide’s joined together). The monosaccharide and disaccharide’s are both water soluble which make them very easy to digest. There are two main types of polysaccharides, ‘storage’ (otherwise known as starches found in roots and grains) and ‘structural’ (known as cellulose found in veggies, to give the veggies like the name suggests, structure) both of these are extremely hard for the body to break down. The human body cannot digest cellulose (cell walls) by itself and relies on bacteria in the intestines to break it down for digestion. Starches are not water soluble and although the body can digest them it requires a huge amount of amylase enzymes. Because they taste like crap raw we end up cooking these root vegetables which destroys the enzymes. Roots are a pancreas’s worst nightmare. The pancreas has to work overtime for three reasons. One, because you usually cook the root it becomes acidic (the pancreas now has to produce bicarbonate to neutralize it). Two, because it was cooked you destroyed the enzymes to break it down (the pancreas now has to produce amylase enzymes to break it down into a single sugar). Three, starches are a huge sugar molecule (that break down into a lot of sugar) and now the pancreas has to produce insulin to eliminate it from the blood stream. The only root vegetables that I eat are Onions, Garlic and Ginger. I eat these because I can eat them raw and because of their natural medicinal properties.

Greens Concentrate

There are many different brands of concentrate but they all have something in common. They are all a blend of some of Nature’s most potent super foods and they all taste like your freshly mowed lawn. I’ve tried the flavored ones but I didn’t like them, they tasted like crappy Kool-Aid. My favorite is GREENS Rx. The front lawn taste goes away after a few days as you get used to it and then you start to look forward to drinking it every day. I have it every morning instead of coffee. It gives me an energy boost quadruple what coffee ever did (I’m serious) and without all the bad side effects of coffee. Greens are pure alkaline and go to work right away boosting your immune system, and protecting you from all sorts of ailments.

Virgin Coconut Oil and Coconut Milk

Mother Nature’s Breast Milk. Coconut milk is as close to human breast milk as you can get as far as fat, protein, carbohydrate, pH and nutrient content. It is a good source of calcium, manganese, selenium, zinc and iron. Approximately 50% of the fatty acids in coconut fat are lauric acid. The only other abundant source of lauric acid found in nature is in human breast milk. Lauric acid is a medium chained fatty acid that can be converted to monolaurin in the human body. Monolaurin is antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal and antiprotozoal. It has been known to destroy viruses such as HIV, herpes, influenza, various pathogenic bacteria including helicobacter pylori (causes ulcers) and protozoa such as giardia lamblia found in contaminated wells and failed municipal water systems. Yet...another amazing fact about coconut is even though it is high in fat it actually promotes weight loss. The reason is because it’s a medium-chain fatty acid. These fatty acids do not circulate in the blood like other fats, but are sent directly to the liver where they are immediately converted to energy, like carbohydrates. They also speed up the body’s metabolism promoting weight loss by burning more calories. I usually have 2-3 tablespoons of virgin coconut oil a day. I’ll eat it right out of the jar with a spoon...tastes great.

Probiotics

Dirt...Get it into yah!! And yes, probiotics (bacterial flora) is a food. Bacteria are so beneficial it has to be listed in my top ten foods. Probiotics will boost the immune system, clean the intestinal walls by dislodging the accumulated decay and help in producing many important enzymes. Probiotics will also increase the availability of vitamins and nutrients, especially Vitamin B, Vitamin K, lactase, fatty acids and calcium. They also kill off the bad bacteria and probiotics will soon leave an undesirable environment for all kinds of parasites. They are so good at cleaning out nutrient sucking parasites that you might not want to start probiotics until you’ve dumped your extra weight (because even parasites will use up some of your calories). But, none the less, probiotics are very important for digestion once you’ve switched to salads and vegetables. The human body cannot digest cellulose (plant cell walls) by itself...it needs intestinal bacteria to break it down. If you don’t have enough intestinal flora the veggies won’t fully digest, not only robbing you of all the nutrients, but the undigested fibre will leave you with enough flatulence to run a city bus.

I don’t like yogurt because I’m lactose intolerant and because most yogurt today is just full of sugar. Actually I feel that lactobacillus acidophilus doesn’t help with my digestion at all. Instead of yogurt I find organic sauerkraut works a lot better, but the best probiotics that I have found to work for me are the Garden of Life products. Their ‘Primal Defence HSO Probiotic formula’ and especially their ‘Fungal Defence’ products are dirt based, do not need to be refrigerated and I think are the best way to restore your digestive health.

Pineapple and Papaya

Pineapple and papaya are loaded with digestive enzymes, bromelain and papain, respectively. Actually all tropical fruit like Pineapple, papaya, avocados, bananas, mangoes...etc... contain huge amounts of enzymes. Enzymes are the workers in the body. It’s like having all the material you need to build a new house but if you don’t have any workers to put the house together it doesn’t get built. Enzymes are so important for bodily function that as soon as the body runs out of them...you’re dead. This is why ‘raw food’ is so important. Cooking or heating any kind of food including all vegetables and meats above 38 Celsius (human body temperature) kills the enzymes. If you have destroyed all the enzymes that break down your food from cooking then the body has to rely on manufactured enzymes to do the job. Instead of these metabolic enzymes being used for all bodily functions including cell metabolism and cell, organ and tissue repair these enzymes have to waste their effort being sent to digest food. This leaves the body in a constant state of disrepair and leaves it wide open for cancers and all sorts of diseases. The human body only has a set amount of enzymes it can produce in a lifetime...it’s kind of like a 'bar of soap'...once it is all used up...that’s it...no more...you’re dead...literally washed up...pun intended. So, the less you have to use the 'bar of soap' by not cooking your food the healthier and longer you will live.

You get a lot of enzymes in raw salad so I would wait until you’ve lost your desired amount of weight before you start fruit because of the high sugar content.

Almonds and Macadamias

Snacks...when I go to the movies, travel or just know that I’m going to be away from the house for a while I’ll bring nuts. I prefer almonds because of their alkaline properties and Macadamias because of the excellent taste and fat content. Macadamias are high in monounsaturated fatty acids (the good fats) that will help reduce your overall cholesterol levels. When you buy nuts always make sure they are raw, organic and haven’t been cooked or roasted. I buy my Macadamias from the health food store. They are kept refrigerated to maintain freshness. When you buy almonds try to get organic and I will always soak them overnight first before I put them into the dehydrator. When you soak them first it deactivates the enzyme inhibitors making them easier to digest. It usually takes 3 days for the almonds to be fully dehydrated where they become nice and crunchy. I’ll usually spice them up with a little salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Once you’ve lost your desired weight then sometimes for a treat you can stir maple syrup onto them before tossing them into the dehydrator.