Switch to a More Plant Based Nutrient Rich Diet
It can get complicated when we want to make the Switch to a healthy way of eating, which is aptly defined by eating “more plant based nutrient rich” or “nutrient dense” food. We minimize this complication by explaining “the Switch” from this literal point of view on purpose because we want to avoid defining a healthy eating style by any one of its attributes as is so common today. We must have a more “whole” or complete” perspective and avoid being limited by fragmented and unbalanced points of view that is at the very root of the complication itself.
Low carb, high protein, low cal, low fat, gluten free etc… are all fragmented ideas. As are raw, Vegan, Paleo, etc… no is rooted in what it means to eat healthy, and that is micronutrient rich foods for starters.
The big part of making the Switch also known as the Nutrition transition is learning how to incorporate more plant foods and plant derived meals into your daily diet, while limiting and perhaps eliminating meat/animal products all together because they are nutrient poor. Animal protein and products are nutrient poor not only because of what they don’t include (phytochemicals, many vitamins and minerals, water, fiber, carbohydrate and essential fats…) but also because of what they include (non-essential saturated fat, cholesterol and animal created vitamins alike vitamin A… and animal protein itself!) that our bodies do not need to survive or thrive, even if we end up eat eating animal products in small quantities.
Making a nutrition transition is not just about eating healthier by giving up junk food either, limiting or eliminating animal products. It’s about optimizing our diets around the 5 Golden Rules of Healthy Eating. If you want to make the change for personal health, environmental health or any other reason, it is best to do so being informed about what’s really going in here. Thinking that eating healthy is simply about not eating meat, and falling back on bread, pasta potatoes, or processed soy foods is simply not going to cut it.
I just posted a public blog post on this very subject – whether or not eating healthy is best defined by eating meat, not eating meat or eating small amounts of meat (animal protein and or animal products? I think NO to all 3 of these ideas. This is not just a vegan vegetarian / meat eating conversation, there is so much more.
As you can see in this photo above. Do you really think it matters if there were a little bit of animal product or junk food in the body when it is filled with so many nutrient rich foods?
But I bet you will start to now understand better that to go from the nutrient poor body on the left, to the nutrient rich body on the right, you are going to have nutrify, detoxify, stabilize and strengthen the body. Can you see that? Imagine the nutrition transition involved as the body evolves from poor to rich.
That’s why you have this support system. ~JAM