What constitutes a great diet?

Dear Friends

What does the Yap Island diet, the Meditterean diet, the Mid-Victorian diet and the Therapeutic Foods supplements have in common?

These diets along with the Therapeutic Foods supplements dramatically reduce the risk of chronic degenerative diseases plaguing the industrialized world today.

The U.S. Peace Corps “went to paradise” in 1966, and I was part of that initial group.  My assignment was to live with the Yapese people for two years as a public health official. Yap was truly a tropical paradise, crystal blue lagoons teaming with all kinds of sea life, vibrant fruits and vegetables picked right out of the lush jungles and small horticultural garden plots. No fast foods, no herbicides or pesticides, just what mother nature provided with intelligent traditional stewarding by the Yapese people.

My job as a public health official was to conduct a census of each household and determine the health status of all individuals, amass the data, and implement disease irradication programs.  What do you suppose I found?

They had some worms, some lice, some filariasis, some TB, but they had very little of the chronic degenerative diseases we deal with  today.  They were a very fit, long living people.

My conclusion:  the active physical life of the Yapese people + a daily diet filled with real live unadulterated vibrant diverse foods. Food that by nature had high actives = a life free of chronic disease.  I would label the diet a true therapeutic foods diet, would you?

The Meditterean Diet is attributed to reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and the whole host of the chronic diseases.  This is well established and we are honored to have a Meditterrean diet expert on our Board of Advisors for BioImmersion—Dr. Artemis Morris who is an outstanding physician in private practice and also a professor at the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine.

Dr. Morris is of Greek heritage, in fact, her family roots come from the Island of Crete. Artemis is conducting ongoing clinical and ethnographic research on the Mediterranean Diet of Crete and its medicinal plants and foods as well.  In 2012 she authored the article Mediterranean Diet and Lifestyle: an Ethnographic Case Study for Eugeria, Health, and Longevity for NDNR.  Here are a few quotes from the article:

Keys et al. found that compared to American men, men from Crete had half the cancer death rate, one-twentieth of the mortality rate attributed to coronary artery disease and the lowest all cause mortality rates in their epidemiological research study of 579 men aged 40 to 59 years from 7 countries. In 1991, thirty-one years after the beginning of the study the Social Health Sector of the University of Crete undertook a medical checkup of the study cohort and found that approximately 50% of the participants from Crete were still alive, in contrast to the other 6 participating countries, where there was not a single survivor.

The free radical scavenging effect of foods and beverages in the Mediterranean diet may account for their benefits in health and longevity….There are a variety of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and nutrient-rich foods in a traditional Mediterranean diet.

Artemis goes on the describe the life and diet of her great-aunt Argyro who passed away in 2011 at the age of 107…. Argyro’s diet for most of her life was characteristic of the Mediterranean diet, with an abundance of plant-based foods and meat eaten once a week, if they were lucky. It’s a beautiful account of her life and factors to be cleaned from a very healthy diet and overall life style.

What the heck can we say about the Mid-Victorian Diet?  Well, you’ve got to read this article by Paul Clayton, March 2009 in the Int. J Environ, Res Public Health, 6(3):1235-1253, entitled How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died.  Here’s a few quotes:

Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. Their levels of physical activity and hence calorific intakes were approximately twice ours. They had relatively little access to alcohol and tobacco; and due to their correspondingly high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables, they consumed levels of micro- and phytonutrients at approximately ten times the levels considered normal today.

The mid-Victorians, with their far greater intakes of fruits and vegetables, which were organic and in many cases contained significantly higher concentrations of phytonutrients than our intensively grown crops do [80–85] were consuming ‘pharmacological’ levels of these valuable and protective compounds. This would explain why they were so effectively protected against cancer, and heart disease, and all the other degenerative, non-communicable disorders. And it would also explain why, with our very low ‘physiological’ intakes, we are so terribly prone to these largely avoidable diseases.

We are in the process of expanding our Therapeutic Foods Supplement line with more foods and plants to boost and augment a basic diet. In today’s toxic world, we need a powerful diet filled with fruits, vegetables, fermented foods, plants, grains, seeds and nuts. We utilize concentrated whole foods, plants, seeds, grains and probiotics in the Therapeutic Foods supplements to create the foundation for a great diet as well as to provide a base for different therapeutic protocols.

See Clinical Notes.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

Clinical Notes:

• Chlorella– 2 to 4 tabs a day
• Phyto Power– 1 to 2 caps a day
• Wild Blue Extract– 1 cap a day
• Cruciferous Sprout Complex– 1 to 2 caps a day
• No. 7 Systemic Booster– 1 tsp a day
• Ultra Minerals– 2 to 4 caps a day

And see how your body feels after six months.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This is the biggest of the grizzleys, the Alaskan Brown Bear.  We think that they survive on fish, but they love a Mediterranean diet too.  Much of their time is spent grazing in the fields of wild berries (crowberries, loganberries, Jacobberries, blueberries, etc) , gobbling them up along with roots, grasses and fungi.

Did you Know?  Grizzly bears have a better sense of smell than a hound dog and can detect food from miles away.