Optimize Your Diet - Pairing Foods You Already Eat For Better Nutrition

I talk a lot on this blog about the importance of doing the little things every day to support longer, healthier lives. This involves for the most part just a couple of items that should be on the back of everyone’s mind all the time.

• Stay active, which, by the way does not mean ‘become a crazed exercise maniac’, rather it means 'just do active things more frequently'. Walk down the block to lunch instead of driving; take the dog for a walk instead of taking him out to the corner to do his business; park at the far end of the parking lot instead of the front. All the little things add up and keep you active.
• And second, the purpose of this post, eat smart. Again this is not difficult. This does not dictate that you change your major food patterns at all. It just means to eat smart; no more.

Eat Smart

Eating smart is my primary focus these days. Eating is an activity that we all do every day and cannot stop doing. Because it is so functionally universal in the human population it should be the perfect place to start. In fact, the bulk of all diseases and ailments occur most directly due to the food we eat and our low activity levels. The food we eat is even more important to our long-term health than most genetic and environmental factors and yet we constantly seek medication to overcome the shortcoming of our poor health which we have the power to control ourselves every single day at the dinner table.

What is The Purpose of Medicine?

You wonder why health care costs are rising. I believe one of the greatest influences on healthcare costs, and similarly prevalence of disease, is based on the simple fact that people feel that medicine and doctors can cure everything better than we can ourselves. Well, my opinion is a little different. Medicine and doctors are able to patch our sick selves just as one were to patch a hole in a pair of jeans, but until we stop dragging our knees across the ground new holes will eventually form regardless of past intervention. The only one out there with control of our bodies and our health is ourselves and it starts with what we put into it.

How Do I Optimize My Diet

Over the last few months I have been slowly building a series of posts on food pairing called Optimize Your Diet. My goal in these posts is to highlight foods that we already cook for ourselves in the kitchen and identify the hidden nutritional and medicinal qualities of those foods. Many of these medicinal qualities are enhanced in very specific circumstances or when the food is simply paired perfectly with another type of food altogether.  Eating smart starts by:

1. Eating in the kitchen rather than out at fast food or restaurants. Eating smart is next accomplished by:
2. Decreasing the quantity that we eat. Unfortunately, especially in America, we have become accustomed to eating far more food than the body actually requires to remain healthy and viable. Decrease the quantity of food and decrease the quantity of empty calories you eat and you will be nearing your stride.
3. Lastly, eat smart by optimizing of your diet. The processes of eating smart ends with identifying how the foods you eat already affect each other positively and negatively and choosing to eat foods in pairs that bring out the most nutritional and medicinal benefits.

Please enjoy the following food pairing series Optimize Your Diet. Each of these posts attempt to show you how you can get more from the foods you already eat. Check back later for additional entries to this list.

Optimize Your Diet - Pairing Foods You Already Eat

Part 1 - Fats and Lycopene aka Oil and Tomatoes
Part 2 - Fats and Fat-Soluble Vitamin D
Part 3 - Broccoli and Tomatoes
Part 4 - Turmeric and Black Pepper
Part 5 - Vitamin D and Soy
Part 6 - Cinnamon with Refined Carbs

As previously noted, I will continue adding to this Optimize Your Diet food pairing series as the days turn to weeks, and the weeks turn to months, and I hope you’ll find benefit in each and every post. This page will be the launching pad for the Optimize Your Diet Series and it will serve as a navigation menu of sorts to it. Please bookmark it and return often to find new entries to the series as they are published.

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