Beating the Winter "Blues" with Good Food

Yesterday, a  friend of mine  was complaining how depressed he was feeling with the cold weather upon us.  While he was telling me this, he was chomping on a candy bar and drinking frozen sugar laden lemonade.  I thought to myself maybe he should be more concerned with not making himself such a host for possible pathogens and low blood sugar through his food choices!

We know we are constantly surrounded by germs and bacteria.    Maybe, we should not be stressing out about how to kill and try to avoid all these germs.  Maybe we should be learning how not to make ourselves hosts for them to multiply in our bodies in the first place! Once healthy and in a balanced state, the body has a natural immunity which can protect itself from these germs.  But how do we do this?

The best possible way to make the body strong is to strengthen the blood and the best way to strengthen the blood is by feeding it proper foods.  The healthiest blood is created by a plant based diet. Why plant based foods?  Because they are loaded with vitamins  and minerals; the keys to keeping the body strong without the addition of high fats and sugars.  These include whole grains, especially brown rice, vegetables, sea vegetables, legumes and fermented soy products.  These are the foundations of healing foods that restore the body’s natural ability to resist the germs in the first place! 

I love this reminder “You are not what you ate;  you are what your plants ate.”   We hope to use this in our upcoming film documentary “The Spirit of Rice”.   During the filming of our documentary I learned so much about the trillions of microbiome in our soil.   In fact,  it is most prominent in the soil of our untouched forest floors.  When we eat foods grown in untreated natural rich soil, the plant provides for us all of the bacterial and microbes needed in our digestive track to help sustain our immunity.  That is why children who play in dirt all day long improve their health.  I also learned that just one season of spraying pesticides in your garden can destroy a great number of these microbes so you end up with lifeless dirt instead of rich and alive soil-thus destroying our host for health.

Many countries around the world and various cultures relied on a breakfast cereal they called Congi to cure all illness.    Congi included maybe one or two special ingredients herbs and condiments made from plants for various illnesses and diseases but always had the same base ingredient, soft cooked brown rice.   A plant based food that supplied the vitamins and minerals needed to strengthen the immune system.

This is all so wonderful you say, but what if you have already become a host and are suffering from the winter blues?    How do you then reduce or eliminate some of the nasty symptoms? Instead of rushing to the nearest drug store to pick up the newly marketed and creatively packaged cold and flu remedy that is usually good at just masking symptoms you  can begin to learn how to prepare some healing food dishes, remedy drinks and external remedies all taught in my online cooking classes.

The recipes I teach may seem foreign as you may be unfamiliar with the ingredients but I can assure you they are very simple to find in area natural foods markets and very simple to prepare.  I make sure to include a little history of these ingredients and how to use them in my  classes and in my cook book called “Macro Magic for Kids and Parents”.

So enjoy the winter season and the outdoors.   Now you know the secret to good health.   And, the next time you Achoo!  You will know what to Do!