Admit it — you are likely one of the many people whomade a food related resolution at the beginning of theyear. Your desire most likely was to gain more in terms of energyand better health, and to stop gaining pounds. That is indeeda worthy goal, because the power to stop and/or reversechronic disease is held in the fork… and the food we put on it.Doctors may soon be prescribing food as a tool toward betterhealth, such as the Cardiologist designed meals (Heart HealthyFeasts) provided by a San Antonio store, The Family Feast.
“Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be yourfood” said Hippocrates, andit’s true that food has thepower to heal, the powerto reverse chronic disease,and the power to help usovercome whatever genetichand we’ve been dealt. ClinicalNutritionist, Abby Kurth, part owner of The Family Feasthas a favorite example of this. She notes that the Pima Indianshave a gene that greatly disposes them to Type II Diabetes andall the associated health problems — heart disease, neuropathy,etc. Researchers noticed that the Pima Indians living inMexico who consumed a more traditional diet (less animal fat,and more complex carbohydrates like beans, plants, etc.) had alower prevalence of Type II Diabetes than Pima Indians livingin Arizona. Lo and behold, when the Pima Indians in the U.S.began to eat the more traditional diet, instead of the StandardAmerican Diet (SAD), consisting of refined food and sugar,their diabetes went away. That’s powerful medicine.
What type of food provides the most benefit? According toKurth, “If you want to be putting the right things on your fork,it is important to look at calories, carbohydrates, fats, and salt.”
First off, science has found that limiting calories to maintainnormal weight in mice and monkeys is like a Fountain of Youth,providing longer life for those animals, and it looks like thesame applies to us. So, controlling calories to a healthful level isimportant. The Heart Healthy Feasts are designed to be part ofa 1,200–1,400 calorie per day diet or can be increased to 1,800calorie for those with greater physical activity.
“We’ve been hearing about healthy and unhealthy fats for solong now, it’s no surprise that it’s important to have the rightkind of fats in a meal if it is to be a health tool. The Heart Healthymeals are low in saturated and trans fats (the bad guys) and highin polyunsaturated fats (the good guys), which helps preventheart disease”, says Nutritionist Kurth.
Carbohydrates we now know are best when they come fromwhole grains and vegetables instead of refined flour and sugars.Eating food that is high in these complex carbohydrates is keyto controlling diabetes and preventing heart disease that oftenresults from diabetes.
Finally, any heart healthyfood should contain saltlevels that can easily fit intothe daily recommendationsof less than 2,300 grams ofsodium touted by many cardiologistshoping to preventheart disease.
Healthy eating made easy “I hate telling people how to eat right. That may be a startlingconfession for someone in the nutrition field, but I couldfrequently sense my client’s frustration and confusion as theywalked out of my office — how they would find the time to shopand cook for the type of food I was telling them about? That’swhat I love about the Heart Healthy Feasts — The Family Feastprovides the meals complete with the vegetables and the freshfoods like salads, dairy, etc. Customers don’t have to think, theydon’t have to shop, they don’t have to cook other than to heatthe meals in the oven/microwave safe containers. It just makes itthat much easier for people to be eating the right way,” explainsKurth.
With healthy eating made easy, the hope is that there will bepeople out there with healthier hearts (and other parts too!),and that’s the best medicine of all.
