-T.C. Fry – Life Sciences Course Chapter 16 – Nutrition, Mind and The Emotions – Pages 353-370 – Terrain Wiki
First, to insure mental and emotional well-being, the diet must supply all needed nutrients in the form of unprocessed whole foods. Nutritional supplements are useless; they cannot be effectively used by the body and cannot be used to fill in nutrient gaps caused by a poor diet.
Second, all “foods” (nonfoods) that rob the body of nutrients must be eliminated in order to maintain the nutritional balance crucial to mental and emotional stability.
Third, foods that leave heavy toxic by-products in the bloodstream must not be eaten if we wish to avoid poisoning our body and our mind. Even small amounts of these toxins are enough to induce depression in most individuals.
Fourth, foods should be eaten in a harmonious environment with a calm, relaxed disposition.
Finally, foods should be eaten out of true physiological need when hunger is present. They should not be eaten as emotional substitutes, for stimulation or as a means of “escape.”
Perhaps the most pressing need is the elimination of all nonfood items from the diet. These nonfoods include white sugar, white flour, alcohol, salt, condiments, and all heavily-processed foods. These foods alone are the major causes of mental and emotional illnesses, and they perform no positive function in the body whatsoever.
Most, health-minded individuals and health-oriented dietary systems condemn these nonfoods as explicitly harmful. Nonfoods are indefensible from the standpoint of good nutrition and must be immediately eliminated from our diet if we wish to regain our natural mental and emotional stability.
The second priority is the elimination of all foods that leave toxic by-products in the body. Some of the foods which leave toxins in the body are: all foods with chemical additives and preservatives, meats, eggs, dairy products, herbs, artificial and preserved foods, fried foods, cooked foods and certain noxious vegetables such as onions, garlic, etc.
For those people who have not yet adopted a vegan diet (that is, a diet free from meat and all animal products), it is of extreme importance to eliminate all foods containing additives, preservatives, etc., in order to decrease the toxic overload that eating animal products produces. Animal products, and meat in particular, prevent full mental tranquility due to the amount of toxins both naturally contained in them and artificially added to them.
In addition to following a vegan diet, the amount of cooked food should be decreased and eliminated. Eating cooked foods results in a state of mental lassitude and deprives the body of the full nutrient range contained in the foods. For a remarkable state of mental clarity, a raw food diet is highly recommended.
What we discover after examining the above observations is that an optimum diet should consist primarily of the following foods: fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts eaten in an unprocessed state and in an harmonious environment.
These foods provide a full range of all needed nutrients; they leave little or no toxic by-products in the body; they do not result in body loss of any nutrients; nor do they upset the body’s natural nutritional balance. They provide the foundation for total physical health and promote an optimum state of mind and excellent emotional health.
These foods alone will not guarantee total well-being—no diet can do that—but they will give us the needed foundation for mental and emotional health.
Michael J. Loomis | Editor at Chew Digest | Scribe at Terrain Wiki