Health Food

Why are flax seeds important to my diet?

Flax seeds are beneficial in many ways. First of all, they contain fibers called lignans that can protect us from cancers like breast and prostate cancers. They contain Omega-3 fatty acids that will dramatically boost our immune system. They are mucilaginous – that means they are slippery – and they will help move stool out of the body quickly. That's very important. Small stools – large hospitals. And fourthly, they can influence the ability of cancer cells to migrate and spread. So, flax is very important. Now, how much do we need? We need roughly about two heaping tablespoons of flax seed per day. I recommend that we grind it up in a little coffee mill for about five seconds so that it becomes more like sawdust. That means that they're that much more digestible in that format and then we can stir them into our pot of cooked cereal, we can sprinkle them on our salads, we can roll a banana in them, we can put them in a blender and make a fruit smoothie out of them, and so we have many ways that we can consume the flax – a bowl of organic apple sauce, unsweetened, put the flax seeds right there and stir it up. There are many ways to get that flax, but you need to get it everyday.

How can eating beans help me stay healthy?

The fact is that the healthiest cultures do eat beans every day. They have it in one form or another, whether it's in their breakfast, their dinner, or their lunch; whatever, but they eat beans every day. So, we recommend based on the healthiest cultures and longevity (they're healthy and they live a long life), that you get between five and six servings of legumes every week. A serving ranges between a half cup and three quarters of the cup, basically depending on the type of bean. I usually recommend to my clients that if they get a half cup, then that's great. There is something that we need to address here. If you've never eaten beans and you suddenly start eating them, you probably will develop gastric distress, to put it mildly. What I recommend is that people start with a spoonful beans; just a spoonful. The first day that they have it, and maybe for two or three days, they just have just one spoonful of beans. Then the next, three days after that they'll have two tablespoons of beans, and then three days later they'll have three tablespoons, until they work up to a half a cup. That way you usually will start producing the enzymes that you need in order to utilise the nutrients in the beans and not develop gastric distress, or gas, we'll just be blunt about it. It's very important to get that through to people; that they do need to slowly incorporate the beans and then they will be able to produce the enzymes to break them down. It's that philosophy of "use it or lose it"; if you don't eat beans, you don't produce the enzymes to break them down. If you eat them, you start producing the enzymes to break them down.

What is "green tea"?

Green tea is excellent because of the catechins basically that are inherent in green tea. There are many other nutrients but its very high in vitamin C, especially the young leaves of the green tea. So the catechins protect against cancer, the vitamin C of course as we know, is a healing nutrient, very beneficial for your tissue development in general. You're getting all of that from green tea. A lot of times people are concerned about the fact that it also contains caffeine, but the amount of caffeine thats in green tea is at most, in the older green tea, half of what you get in a regular cup of coffee. So truly its not something to be concerned about because the benefits far outweigh any concern over caffeine.

What is a good tip for buying green tea?

Most people in America buy green tea that is old, or the older leaf. What you need to do is spend more money and get a really good quality young leaf tea, preferably from China. Some of the Japanese teas are good. But, the green tea, I think, should be loose leaf. The problem is, we buy these teas in a tea bag, and the green tea needs to have room to expand, so the Vitamin C is released into the water and so is the catkins.

What is "soy"?

Soy, or the soya bean, is extremely valuable for many reasons. It contains wonderful essential fatty acids that our body can utilize. It's not toxic; they're healthy fats. Soy is also very high in calcium, magnesium, selenium, zinc, potassium, iron, iodine, and all those nutrients that we know are beneficial for protection of our body and production of energy. Also, soy contains a family of isoflavones which are protective against cancer. The two we most commonly hear about are genistein and daidzein. However, in research done with just genistein and daidzein in a supplement form, the results were non-conclusive. When we eat the soy, we not only get those two; it's the same as with food with the tens of thousand of nutrients inherent in the food. The same is true with soy. There are about six or seven known isoflavones in soy that work together intrinsically, so you need to get the whole food based soy products; tempeh, tofu, soy milk (which is the least beneficial I would say, but soy milk is still something you can add to your diet), miso, or edamame (the young soy bean in the pod that you often get at Japanese restaurants). Those are all extremely valuable sources of calcium and the other nutrients I just mentioned.