What Is Prevention?

In the spirit of a more specific focus for Eat2Prevent, I want to define preventive foods. All whole, organic foods prevent disease. All of them. Not just kale and blueberries, but grains and animal protein as well.

However, if the body is already in a highly diseased state, certain foods may need to be eliminated because the body just can't handle them. That is why you hear of heart disease being reversed by raw or vegan diets. Cancer, for instance, thrives on sugar, so cancer patients on a healing diet plan are often told to avoid all grains and fruits, not just processed sugar. Patients taking warfarin or other medications related to blood pressure are sometimes told to avoid leafy greens, which can interfere with the medication's effects—in my opinion a very sad consequence of relying on prescription drugs.

It's amazing that the body can be healed by simply eliminating certain foods. However, this does not mean that meat, grains, or fruit are bad. Meat especially has a bad reputation right now as a "bad" food, primarily because it contains saturated fat. In another post, I'll go into what a beneficial food saturated fat is, but for now suffice it to say that it is the high concentrations of harmful substances found in mass produced, non-organic meat that make it harmful, not the meat itself or the fat it contains. Saturated fat is highly essential to absorbing certain vitamins and can itself be a source of vitamin D, making it a disease-preventing food.

It also means that avoiding beneficial foods can cause the body to become diseased. Since all whole foods are preventive, the lack of them removes much of the beneficial protection they offer against many common, chronic, and deadly diseases. It's not simply a matter of cosmetic weight loss; changing your diet directly impacts your likelihood of getting sick.

Each blog from now on will be dedicated to a particular food, its disease prevention properties, and how you can realistically get it into your diet! Remember, if you want to be healthier, don't try to eliminate "bad" foods before you add in the good. It will be much easier, and it will be a choice you want to make rather than one you feel forced to make.