Holistic Nutrition Comes of Age
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MAKING A DIFFERENCE Holistic Nutrition Comes of Age Holistic Nutrition: A 40-Year Review chronic illness as well as three commer- with a Glimpse Forward cial nutrition food trends and the holistic Eating a yummy homemade dinner—such nutrition counter points. as a spring greens salad with a lemon artichoke heart dressing, fresh caught wild salmon with Trend #1: Hidden Calories backyard dill and thyme sauce, and baked yam By 2009, US farmers were producing 3,900 topped with yogurt and nutmeg—is an example calories a day more than they grew in the 1980s of eating local, whole, fresh, colorful foods, ideally from corn, soy, and wheat. As farmers produced grown in soil enriched with manure and compost extra calories, the food industry figured out how rather than fertilizer and pesticides. Sadly, current to get them into the bodies of people who didn’t generations have not grown up eating real food grown really want to eat 700 more calories a day than before. and prepared the old-fashioned way. They’ve grown up in the Most of those calories enter our mouths in ready-to-eat foods midst of a culture littered with soda, Frosted Flakes®, cheeseburgers, with processed corn and soybeans, vegetable oil, and high-fructose French fries, and fake foods. corn syrup.6 In 1989, when George H.W. Bush was president and Madonna Corn contributes 554 calories a day to America’s per capita food was at the top of the charts, holistic nutrition was thought of supply, and soy another 257. Add wheat (768 calories) and rice (91 as a quaint throwback to the days of our grandparents—a time calories) and you can see there isn’t a whole lot of room left in the when dinner was cooked from scratch instead of pulled out of the American stomach for any other foods.8 About a third of all our freezer, ready to heat n’ eat. calories now come from what is known, by common consent, as Let’s look at changes in our food supply in the past 20+ years that junk food.6 Eating foods with more calories and less nutrients is have contributed to the rise in obesity, diabetes, and premature, a recipe for fatigue, weight gain, and blood sugar instability. R. ED BAUMAN, MEd, PhD, is the founder and president of and culinary arts by training and preparing individuals for careers as Bauman College: Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts, located Nutrition Consultants, and Natural Chefs. Bauman is also the President in Penngrove, right on the threshold of Northern California of the Board of Directors of the Palm Drive Health Care Foundation. DWine Country. After studying traditional health and nutrition systems Bauman has long asserted the need to shift to organic, non-genet- for more than 30 years, Bauman developed a model for holistic nutri- ically-modified, whole foods. However, he cautions, because each tion he calls Eating for Health (“It’s not another diet!”), an approach to person has unique genetic tendencies, needs, tastes, and tolerances, nutrition and health that raises awareness about types and sources of one size does not fit all when it comes to proper nourishment. People foods, as well as eating habits. need differing amounts of healthful foods and nutrients to achieve Bauman has spent his entire career “exploring, tasting, learning and optimal wellness in a fast paced, stress-filled, toxic world. Similarly, our teaching about culturally diverse, delicious traditional healing foods.” individual metabolisms must continually adapt to changes in seasons, He started out as an organic farmer, then orga- situations, climate, health, and age. For example, Bauman notes, the nized a food coop and opened a natural food nutrient depleted Standard American Diet that many of us ate as children restaurant in western Massachusetts, where he will not nourish us sufficiently as aging adults to protect us from diet began teaching cooking from scratch. He came and lifestyle related preventable illness. to California and founded Bauman College in This article is adapted from Nutrition Essentials for Everyone (2010), 1989, looking to create a sustainable culture of a Bauman College workbook Bauman and colleague Jodi Friedlander, wellness within individuals, communities, and MS, NC, developed to accompany an evidence-based, whole food health care delivery systems. The state licensed community course. that Bauman believes would be a terrific addi- vocational school promotes a comprehensive tion to patient education in clinics, hospitals, and even as an online and integrative approach to holistic nutrition resource to help reduce medical costs and improve health outcomes. 24 | Pacific Health Spring 2013 Reprinted from Pacific Health Magazine MAKING A DIFFERENCE Trend #2: Plant Species Vanishing increasingly demonstrates that food is the and make cost-effective diet and lifestyle from Our Food primary promoter of health and the main decisions to restore balance. Food is the protector from disease. This has given the foundation, while herbs and supplements “Humans have eaten some 80,000 plant public and the medical profession a much- work best to deal with special needs and species in our history. After recent precipitous needed wake up call. In 1990, Dr. Dean health issues. Attitude is the crown of creat- changes, three-quarters of all human food now Ornish published findings inThe Lancet, ing and maintaining healthy habits. comes from just eight species, with the field the leading medical journal in the United The following are elements of Holistic quickly narrowing down to genetically modi- Kingdom that a low fat, vegetarian diet, Nutrition. fied corn, soy, and canola.”6 combined with yoga and emotional sup- Farmers’ markets have been the bright- “Garden seed inventories show that while port, reversed cardiovascular disease in 84 est star on the holistic nutrition, whole food, about 5,000 non-hybrid vegetable varieties percent of participants who followed his and sustainable agriculture horizon. Follow- were available from catalogs in 1981, the num- program for one year. T. Colin Campbell of ing the passage of the Farmer-to-Consumer ber in 1998 was down to 600.”6 Cornell University reported the first batch Direct Marketing Act of 1976, active U.S. The loss of plant varieties affects us in of results from a large study in China that farmers’ markets have grown from about several ways. Large corporations own the noted urbanites, who ate a diet higher in 350 to well over 3,500 today, or an average seeds that grow the plants that most people saturated fats and animal protein, had of 75 per state. 6 Buying food out of doors, eat. These are altered to create greater crop higher incidences of mortality and mor- in the midst of a market place with grow- yields, greater shelf life, and to be more pest bidity than rural people, who ate a plant- ers standing proudly behind the fruits of resistant. This may sound good, but often based diet with limited amounts of animal their labor, brings the message of people, these plants are less tasty, less juicy, and are protein. food, culture, and community together in a more allergenic. As a backyard gardener, I Diet programs have grown like mush- vibrant way that is fun, healthy, and socially love to grow heirloom fruits and vegetables rooms on a damp and shady log. For weight uplifting. that are native to my region and are far loss, Dr. Robert Atkins promoted a high Organic standards have been carefully more delicious and nutritious than life- protein, low carbohydrate, low-calorie hammered out, only to be watered down by less commercial varieties. Compare a home diet, augmented with an array of dietary large stakeholders in the food and farming grown, heirloom tomato or Gravenstein supplements, known as the Atkins Diet. Dr. business. apple to an import. The native varieties Barry Sears introduced the Zone Diet, while “The paper trail of organic standards offers win hands down. More plant choice widens the concept of food combining was widely only limited guarantees to the consumer. Spe- our taste, appreciation, and desire to cook touted by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond in cifically, it certifies that vegetables were grown rather than be cooked for. their book, Fit for Life. The Blood Typing Diet, without genetic engineering or broadly toxic put forth by Dr. Peter D’Amato, suggested chemical herbicides or pesticides; animals were Trend #3: Diet-Disease Connection which foods to eat or avoid, depending one’s not given growth-promoting hormones or anti- Today, heart disease causes at least 40 blood type O, A, B, or AB. biotics. ‘Certified organic’ does not necessar- percent of all US deaths. During the 60-year Conflicting evidence during this time ily mean sustainably grown, worker-friendly, period from 1910 to 1970, the proportion of proved confusing to consumers and health fuel-efficient, cruelty-free, or any other virtue traditional animal fat in the American diet providers. In the past 20 years, diet wars a consumer might wish for.” 6 declined from 83 percent to 62 percent, and have been launched and persist, whereby Sustainable Nutrition—In January butter consumption plummeted from 18 proponents jockey for market share and 2010, Michael Pollen was on the Oprah pounds per person to four per year. During ideological supremacy through books and Winfrey Show discussing the whole foods the same period the percentage of dietary nutrient programs. Beyond the hubbub of movement and explaining how the over- vegetable oils in the form of margarine, these debates, however, is one common consumption of processed food is a detri- shortening, and refined oils increased about denominator: people needed to eat more ment to health and ecology. Increasingly, 400 percent while the consumption of sugar fresh whole foods and minimize their consumers are reading labels, eschewing and processed foods increased about 60 intake of processed and refined foods.