At least one third of your food should be uncooked
There are valuable and sensitive micronutrients that are damaged when you heat foods. Cooking and processing food can destroy these micronutrients by altering their shape and chemical composition. Regular vegetable juicing will easily help you reach this goal of 1/3 raw food in your diet.

Eat more vegetables
Let us first start out by describing what you can and should definitely eat more of: vegetables. All vegetables promote health, unless you are allergic to them or they cause gas or intestinal problems. Recommended vegetables include asparagus, escarole, avocado, fennel, beet greens, green and red cabbage, bok choy, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, lettuce (romaine, red leaf, green leaf), cauliflower, mustard greens, celery, onions, chicory, parsley, Chinese cabbage, peppers (red, green, yellow and hot), chives, tomatoes, collard greens, turnips, dandelion greens, spinach, endive, and zucchini . For the healthiest choices, those with high carbohydrates should be consumed in more moderation, such as beets, jicima, carrots, winter squashes, and eggplant. Potatoes should be avoided due to the high amount of starch.

It would be best to consume your vegetables uncooked, but you may have to lightly steam them initially. You should eat about one pound of vegetables every day for every 50 pounds of body weight. Vegetables contain phytochemicals, which are powerful natural agents to promote health. They will also help to alkalinize your system, as most of us are far to acidic. Most people benefit more from increased vegetables than from extra vitamins. You will normally need a large amount of vegetables to optimize your body's pH acid/alkaline balance

Nearly everyone would benefit from eating as many vegetables as possible within the allowances of their metabolic type design limits, or their unique biochemical individuality. Please remember that you are unique, and your body knows best and will tell you, what is an optimal amount for you. An Eskimo simply can't eat as much vegetables as a Peruvian Indian can. Not only would they feel poorly but they'd likely develop a ravenous appetite matched only by their sweet cravings, as well as who knows what degenerative process and emotional imbalances.

However, a "typical" or "average," amount of vegetables is approximately one pound of vegetables for every 50 pounds of body weight. However it is important to recognize that everyone is unique. Please remember though that this is the average, it is best to eat according to your appetite and fine-tune thereafter. In other words, let your body report back to you how accurate your appetite/taste buds are at gauging what is right for you.

Keep your vegetables fresh
If you are unable to obtain organic vegetables, you can rinse non-organic vegetables in a sink full of water with 4-8 ounces of distilled vinegar for 30 minutes, or use the solution described at the end of this article. Be sure and squeeze as much air as you can out of the bag that holds the vegetables and then seal it. The bag should look like it is vacuum-packed. Do this by holding the bag against your chest and running your arm over the bottom of the bag to the top, which bleeds the air out of the bag. This will double or triple the normal storage life of the vegetables.

Limiting sugar is critical
Eating refined sugar weakens your immune system and promotes yeast overgrowth. All non-diet pops have 8 teaspoons in each can. Most packaged cereals have sugar as their major ingredient. Avoid most natural sweeteners (including corn syrup, fructose, honey, sucrose, maltodextrin, dextrose, molasses, rice milk, almond milk, white grape juice, fruit juice sweetened, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, date sugar, cane sugar, corn sugar, beet sugar, succanat and lactose).

When in doubt about the sugar content of a food you can always look at the list of ingredients and see how many grams of carbohydrates are listed. Unless the carbohydrates are from aboveground vegetables you should be concerned that they represent sugars that could alter your insulin levels. For a detailed and very readable account of the strong connection between sugar and ill-health -- including depression, weight gain, physical disease and more -- I highly recommend the book “Sugar Blues” by William F. Dufty.

Avoid hypoglycemia
Most of us eat large amounts of grains and sugars that cause us to have large amounts of insulin circulating in our blood. When you stop eating grains your body will take several days to lower your insulin levels. In the meantime the high insulin levels will cause you to have many symptoms such as dizziness, confusion, headaches, and generally feeling miserable.

If you eat every two hours for the first few days of your transition you will be able to avoid this temporary side effect. You will need to eat some protein, such as an egg, piece of chicken, turkey, fish or some seeds along with a vegetable such as a piece of celery, cucumber or red pepper. This will help to prevent hypoglycemia and stabilize your blood sugar.

Even after your system has adjusted, it will be wise to eat 4-6 meals a day. Eating more frequently has been shown to normalize cholesterol levels. It will also help your adrenal glands better regulate cortisol levels.

Many people ask about Equal or Nutrasweet (Aspartame). These artificial sweeteners need to be eliminated. There are more adverse reactions to Nutrasweet reported to the FDA than all other foods and additives combined. In certain individuals, it can have devastating consequences. I do not recommend the herb stevia as a sweetener, most people are addicted to grains and sugars, and stevia will stimulate the carbohydrate/sugar addiction cravings. If you are healthy you can use a few teaspoons of succanat intermittently. One should also avoid artificial chemicals like MSG.

Eat Organic
Sixty percent of all herbicides, 90% of fungicides, and 30% of insecticides are considered carcinogenic by the Environmental Protection Agency of the U.S. government. Organic agriculture produces a wide variety crops without these harmful chemicals, irradiation, or biotechnology. Water quality is degraded by pesticides and herbicides. Thirty eight states in the U.S. have contaminated groundwater due to run-off from conventional agriculture, polluting drinking water for more than half the U.S. population.

A recent study (March 2003) linked Parkinson Disease to diets high in fruit. The study concluded that the causative factor was the high amount of pesticides in the fruit. All of the fruit tested was grown with the use of pesticides.

To become a certified organic product the producer must pass a series of stringent quality tests (and continue to pass the tests) to ensure that the ingredients used in production are fully organic. Fully organic means that the crop has been naturally grown, raised, harvested and processed with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides. Certified organic products have not been genetically modified and are regarded as 'GMO Free'.

Make a Menu -- If you fail to do this, you are planning to fail
Most people have great difficulty implementing these suggestions unless they sit down once a week (at a time when you are well rested, fresh and relaxed) and plan every meal for the week ahead. A good rule for working people is to prepare your meals ahead of time. For example, make your lunch for the next day before you go to bed. Also, to know what you will be eating for dinner before you leave the house in the morning. This way you can go to the store or take the appropriate items out of the freezer. This is strongly advised. Those who don't do this will more easily slip back into their old, more comfortable, and less healthy eating habits.

Even with a perfect eating plan, I recommend complete nutritional testing to determine what additional support your body needs.

References
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