By Gray Graham, NTP
“We are what we eat.” We’ve all heard that cliché before and it turns out, it’s completely true. In fact, according to an emerging state-of-the-art science called Epigenetics, we’re also what our parents, grandparents and great grandparents ate.
What we eat literally impacts our genes, which not only affects us as individuals, but our children and our grandchildren as well. If you’re eating a nutritious, well-balanced diet, this is very good news. But if not, there can be serious consequences to you AND your offspring.
The good news is that the right lifestyle choices, particularly around food, can reset those genes in the short term and the long term. If you want good health, then following these ten essential principles for activating the food-gene-health link is the best way to start:
- Eat fresh whole food in its natural state as often as possible.
- Eat a wide variety of foods.
- Select organic, grass-fed, free-range, local and sustainable foods whenever possible.
- Consume high-quality food with the proportion of protein, carbohydrates, and fats our genes adapted to over the millennia.
- Choose ONLY minimally processed oils and fats that have retained their naturally occurring proportion of nutrients.
- Choose plant and animal foods that have been grown or raised on sustainable and nutrient-rich soil.
- Choose wild-caught fish from the least polluted waters.
- Select, store, and prepare food in ways that preserve its nutrients
- Drink clean water
- Give regard to every aspect of the meal.
Each time you eat or participate in any food-related activity, remember that all ten guidelines count and that optimal nourishment includes both the familiar nutrients in food, as well as the organic, grass-fed, free-range, and “enlightened eating’ nutriments missing from the food charts. The elements of the Green Gene Guidelines are meant to make it easy for you to practice them daily. For only by actually doing them each day will you be empowered to nourish your genes in the ways they are meant to be nourished.
Also, be patient with yourself: making such sweeping changes in what you eat is a process. In other words, changing your relationship to food isn’t likely to happen overnight: success takes ongoing nurturing, care, and regard…for yourself.
About the author: Gray Graham, NTP, teaches clinical nutrition to physicians and other healthcare practitioners worldwide. He is the founder of the Nutritional Therapy Association and is the author of the book Pottenger’s Prophecy: How Food Resets Genes for Wellness or Illness. Learn more at www.pottengersprophecy.com.
