Read Labels on Everything You Plan to Buy

GENERAL DIET PLAN

READ LABELS ON EVERYTHING YOU PLAN TO BUY

THESE ARE THE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF THE BASIC DIET--WHAT IS HIGH-LIGHTED APPLIES SPECIFICALLY TO YOU. In general regarding ORGANIC FOOD, the rule is if it is AVAILABLE AND AFFORDABLE, buy it. If not one or the other, then don’t and just bless and eat your normal food.

*Abbreviations: HFS stands for Healthy Food Stores and includes Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Trader Joe’s, AJ’s Fine Foods, and others of the same sort. SHA—stands for supermarket healthy aisles

OILS

It is very important to eat good oils--they contain essential nutrients in them that nourish us and are requirements for us to be healthy and stay healthy. There are also very harmful oils we need to avoid entirely. Good oils will be marked to the side by yellow high-light circles. Neutral oils, found in dairy and fat, are okay usually in moderation only.

1. Avoid Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHOs)--Also listed on food labels as Vegetable Fat and Vegetable Shortening. This type of oil is the number one food additive in our foods, and is VERY UNHEALTHY TO EAT.

2.READ LABELS!!--Basically most anything that has oil in it in the SHA will have PHOs in them: margarines and other fake butter products, Crisco/shortenings, cookies, crackers, peanut butter, candy, pastries/muffins, butter-flavored microwave popcorn, Cool Whip, potato chips, tortilla chips, non-dairy creamers, frozen tater tots...essentially most frozen and prepared foods.

3. At good stores--you can buy most of the above foods, but without the PHOs in them. It's not really the food category that's bad, just those specific products that contain the PHOs. Any other oil on a label aside from PHOs is okay to eat.

4.Good Oils To Use In Your Home: Butter (organic at health food stores), extra virgin olive oil, and unrefined, high oleic (those word MUST be on the label) safflower oil. I have arranged to have Gentle Strength coop carry Unrefined High Oleic Safflower Oil. Coconut oil is also good to use and now is sold in some Health Food Stores. If you are dairy sensitive, you can buy Earth Balance (very tasty) at HFS, or Smart Balance at SHA instead of butter and margarine. Canola oil is NOT a good oil, unless you must buy a refined oil. DO NOT EAT SOY MARGARINE!

5. Refrigerate all oils but the extra virgin olive oil, which you can just store in a cool, dark cabinet.

GRAINS

If you have any sort of weight in your abdominal area, and are interested in losing that weight, grains of all sorts are probably what you should decrease in your diet.

1. Always use whole grains: 100% whole wheat/other grain bread, brown/wild rice, whole grain crackers/pasta/pancake/muffins, whole wheat bagels, etc.

2.Crackers: Buy whole grain ones without PHOs: Many at HFS/SHA. Also can buy Plain Rye-Krisp/Rye-Vita, WASA, Ak-Maks, rice and popcorn cakes (eat only the plain variety in the Quaker Oats Brand; all Hains/Health Valley ones are okay).

3.Hot Cereals: Any unsweetened one is okay--oatmeal, cream of rye/rice/wheat. No sweetened instant packets. Try to avoid cream of wheat to add variety to your grain intake.

4.Cold Cereals--There are many different types of healthy cereals at health food stores/healthy aisles at supermarkets. The only regular cereals that are whole grain, sugar free, and don't have PHOs are Plain Grape Nuts, Perky's Nutty Rice, and Unfrosted Shredded Wheat.

5. Various stores have all types of whole grain mixes for muffins, pancakes, waffles.

6. Try to limit wheat intake to just once a day--Americans eat too much wheat, which is a very common food allergen. There are many other excellent grains out there to eat and experiment with: oats and oatmeal, spelt, millet, barley, rye, corn, amaranth, quinoa, teff, rice. For example, eat a wheat free cereal for breakfast, have a sandwich at lunch, and then have brown rice or millet or potatoes with dinner.

Vegetables

1. Eat at least 5-9 servings of vegetables everyday (a serving is ½ a cup)--They can be either fresh or frozen. No canned vegies, no boiling of vegies, no head/iceberg lettuce: use only red or green leaf, romaine, spinach, kale, cabbage, collard green, beet greens, mustard greens, etc. The darker the green the better. Ideally, the best way to eat veggies is to stir fry, steam them, or bake them. If you steam them, drink the water that's left over. It contains most of the potassium and several B vitamins that get leached from the vegies when they are cooked.

2. Especially healthy vegies are those from the cruciferous family--broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, radish, cabbage; onions and garlic; the orange vegies--carrot, squash, yams, sweet potatoes, tomatoes; and the deep green leafy ones. But, ALL veggies have their worth and you should strive both for frequency of intake and variety.

3. Salads can be interesting and fun: Try adding pickles, olives, sunflower seeds, raisins, grated cheese. Avoid heavy dressings like blue cheese, thousand island, etc., and instead just use olive oil with vinegar or lemon juice, Italian, Caesar, vinaigrette. A great dressing is flax seed oil and balsamic vinegar. DO NOT USE FAT FREE DRESSINGS! "Annies" or “Drew’s” salad dressings at healthy food stores are excellent.

4. An easy way to add veggies into a diet is to add leaf lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sprouts, etc., to your sandwich at lunch; then eat a baked potato and some peas, half a squash (or whatever) at dinner. That would make up two cups. Munch on a carrot, celery, or cherry tomatoes for a snack, and so forth.

FRUIT

1. Eat one or two pieces of fruit a day. An easy way to get a fruit in is to eat one first thing in the morning. Eat a real fruit before getting into juices, dried fruits, canned fruit, etc.

PROTEIN

**MEAT:

1. Game meat and/or organically grown meat is the ONLY meat to eat regularly. On the internet there are organic ranchers selling organic buffalo, venison, chicken, beef, ostrich, lamb, pork at cheaper prices than in stores. DO NOT eat a lot of meat if supermarket meat is your only source of meat.Optimally, we shouldn't eat meat more than once per day. Roasting/baking meat is the healthiest way to prepare meat--frying and barbecuing are the worst.

2.Avoid high processed meat products unless prepared by an organic rancher: hot dogs; sausage, pepperoni, bacon (the three pizza meats); bologna, salami; and beef jerky. These are poor quality meats full of nitrates, and other chemicals/hormones/etc. which cause cancer, unless organically made.

3. Organic meat is available in town at Whole Foods, Wild Oats and some other stores.

4. Organic meat contacts—make sure meats aren’t “finished” with grains, that they are Grain Fed AND Grain FINISHED:

Contact AERO—Alternative Energy Resources Organization: or and ask them to send you their booklet “Abundant Montana”. There are many ranches and farms listed in there that support well done organic farming. I can personally vouch for the first ranch listed below. Remember to ask them if they grass FINISH their animals.

--this is a great website through which on can order a variety of excellent, all grass fed and finished meat products.

Wayne and Sue Arnold: (grass fed bison, bison jerky)

(organic bison and ostrich; pure pacific salmon)

MANY OTHERS ON THE INTERNET!

Also, try this company:

Daily Blessing Foods
888-862-5785

(just a price list for quick reference)

**OTHER PROTEINS FOODS TO SUBSTITUTE FOR MEAT:

1. Beans, peas, lentils--use BEANO as a bean digestive aid, if needed. Also, if you are new to beans and fear the gas effects of beans, follow these procedures to decrease such effects: Soak the beans in water overnight, then throw that water out and use new water to cook them in. It is very helpful to--at first--cook beans one type at a time, to learn which one you can tolerate well and which ones produce excessive gas. After you are familiar with the good and bad beans for you, then you can mix and match the good beans together, if you want. Crockpots are an excellent way to cook beans; you can start them cooking in the morning and have them all ready to eat when you get home from work.

2. Rawnuts (Peanuts should be eaten roasted, but other nuts should NOT be roasted or dry roasted except occasionally)—Trader Joe’s sell raw nuts cheaply. All nuts are good to eat: walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, pecans, filberts, almonds, brazil, etc.

3.Nut butters--particularly almond butter or cashew butter, or tahini. You can get good peanut butter with no added sugar or partially hydrogenated oils in Trader Joe’s brand, at the health food stores. Store these upside down in the fridge for easy use; that way the oil will naturally be mixed in with the nut butter and not sit on top.

4.Soy products--protective against breast cancer, prostate cancer,balances out female menstrual problems, lowers cholesterol. If you start eating a lot of soy foods, then you should begin eating seaweeds, too, as soy can lower the functioning of the thyroid, and seaweeds will help prevent that. Here are the various categories of soy:

a. Tofu (firm or baked), tempeh, miso soup. The Tofu Handbook is a good book to learn how to use tofu in cooking. Basically getting firm or baked and slicing and dicing and adding to soups, stir fries, casseroles, lasagnas, etc. is an easy way to go.

b. Soy meat analogs (name in parenthesis suggests which company’s product to try first): soy hotdogs (YVES), soy sausage (Tofu Links, Gimme Lean); soy bologna (YVES); soy pepperoni and Canadian bacon (YVES); soy burgers (Garden Burger Veggie Medley); soy bacon (Fakin Bacon).

c. Soy dairy alternatives: UNSWEETENED soy milk (liquid or powder form), soy cheese, soy yogurt, soy ice cream, soy sour cream. Westsoy has an unsweetened milk. Many soy milks can be very high in sugar.

d. Roasted soy nuts and Edamame (cooked soybeans ready to eat).

e. Soy Nut Butter

5. Fish--Eat oily fish 2-3 times a week: salmon, herring, cod, trout, sardines, halibut. Canned fish is fine, although don’t get too much tuna that way; cook fresh fish lightly (broiling, microwave, bake). Avoid tuna steaks, mackeral, catfish, sturgeon, swordfish, and shark due to high environmental toxin content and worries of extinction. All fish are a bit contaminated, but some more than others. Other fish, such as perch, red snapper, orange roughy, tilapia, etc., do not contain good oils in them, but are not overly polluted, so are okay to eat. Shrimp, clams, mussels, crab, lobster and so forth are also okay to eat. Avoid FARMED FISH if at all possible—“Atlantic Salmon” is farmed salmon and has less health benefits and high amounts of toxins.

6.Eggs—All healthy food stores and many supermarkets generally carry organic eggs, not just “free-range”. We can get organic Omega-3 eggs at Trader Joe’s and other places. Organic is the word you want to see on the container. It is thought that by cooking eggs by hard or soft-boiling, sunny side up or poached, that is a healthier way to prepare them, if you are concerned about cardiovascular disease. However, one need not be overly concerned about that.

7.Dairy

a. DO NOT EAT ARTIFICIAL CHEESES--Velveeta, Pasteurized Process Cheese Foods, American cheese.

b. Cheeses: generally buy low fat (made with some skim milk). Farmers and ricotta are naturally low in fat. Buy organic cheese.

c. Milk--Use skim milk, or the lowest fat milk you can. There is also organic milk available at healthy food stores.

d. Yogurt--Use PLAIN and add your own fruit. All fruited yogurts are highly sweetened.

e. Creams--Creams of all sort should generally be avoided, due to the high fat and calorie content.

1. Sour cream--get soy sour cream or use plain yogurt.

2. Avoid cream soups, alfredo sauces.

FAST FOODS

People should eat out no more than 1-2 times a week.

**AVOID FAST FOODS and DEEP FAT FRIED FOODS--About the only fast foods worth eating are: Whole wheat Subway subs (or other companies) with all the vegie fixings, hold the cheese; Mexican food is not generally that bad (watch the sour cream); Veggies only pizza, and so forth. Arby’s has some healthy sandwiches now offered. Usually I suggest people mostly prepare their own food so that they don’t often have to rely on fast food to nourish them. Other local places would be Pita Jungle, Baja Fresh, and any of the other million more healthy places in this area.

**REGULAR RESTAURANTS: Get a piece of meat, fish, or chicken, with baked potato, salad, and skip dessert. Avoid fried foods, creamy pastas, eating too much. Many ethnic foods such as Mediterranean, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, etc. are much healthier than big slabs of steaks or fatty lasagnas.

DRINKS

1.DON'T DRINK THESE: Pop, sweetened ice tea drinks (Arizona, Lipton, Snapple), sweetened fruit drinks (Ocean Sprays, Lemonade, Kool-Aid, Powerade, Gatorade, Sunny Delight, Crystal Light, Hawaiian Punch, all the other sugar water products in pretty bottles on the supermarket shelves, etc.), and most all the colored and caffeinated drinks in the supermarket aisles, cocoas/hot chocolate/chocolate milk. Those “healthy herbal” drinks are also very sweetened. Avoid!

2. Coffee/Decaf--If you can have it, please limit the amount to a maximum of 1-2 cups a day.

1. You cannot have coffee/decaf

3.These are okay to drink: water; unsweetened fruit juices (maximum of 6-8 oz/day, though may dilute with water to make 12-16 oz/day); unlimited vegie juices (low salt V-8, tomato juice); milk; soy/rice milk; herb teas; Green tea; plain sparkling mineral waters/club soda/seltzer water (add lemon juice or fruit juice to); Coffee substitutes: Pero, Cafix, Roma, etc. (instants); Teechino (brewed, expresso, or French press)—use 1 TBS per 10 cup pot to start with.

4.Alcohol--you can have 1) None or 2) one drink a day.

SWEETS/SUGAR

1.AVOID WHITE AND BROWN SUGAR, HONEY, AND ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS! Honey is not this freebie sweet that is okay to use all the time--use minimally. A little mannitol or sorbitol in gum is fine. Stevia is not recommended. Sugar in any form, “healthy” or otherwise, promotes the need to have things taste sweet to be good.

2. Synonyms for white sugar: sucrose, glucose, fructose, dextrose, maltose, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup solids.

3.Sweets that are okay to eat daily: fruit; unsweetened fruit juice; a small amount of unsweetened dry fruit (raisins, dates, e.g.); canned fruit in fruit juice only (no light or heavy syrup); all-fruit jams (Smucker's Simply Fruit, Polaner's Fruit Spread, others at HFSs such as Sorrel Ridge); all-fruit syrups (at HFSs) or, occasionally, 100% Maple Syrup.

4. Maximum of 1-2 sugary foods at most are permissible A WEEK. Many people find it is helpful to choose one or two days a week on which they can eat something sweet (e.g.. Sundays and Wednesdays), and then avoid eating sweets on the other 5-6 days.

5.Alternative sweeteners for baking (all are available at HFSs): unsulphured blackstrap molasses; date sugar (good but expensive); Mystic Lake Fruit Concentrate and/or Fruitsource (pineapple syrup); Brown Rice Syrup; Malted Barley Syrup.

6.WATCH OUT FOR HIDDEN SUGARS!!--LOW FAT AND NONFAT FOODS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS VERY HIGH IN SUGAR. Avoid packaged low and non-fat foods. READ LABELS!!

HAVE SOME FUN!!

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