American Fitness Professionals & Associates

By Dolores J  Argutto   As a Nutrition Consultant, I advocate the method of Holistic Medicine which approaches the healing of the body through the integration of treating the body, mind and spirit. I get headaches often. A consequence from listening avidly to my friends, family, clients and acquaintances about their habits with regard to what they ingest!  The Father of Medicine, Hippocrates is famous for the phrase ” Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.” In this day and age as never before we are besieged by illnesses directly related to our dietary habits.

The Old Testament contains numerous records of “laws” for the selection, preparation and storage of foods. I defy you to find purple filled cookies, doughnuts(according to Money magazine, the number of doughnuts Americans consume every twelve months is 10 Billion!), Krispy Kreme donuts(market capitalization of this company is $2 Billion Dollars)croissants, ring dings, twinkies, potato chips, pretzels, cheese doodles, snickers, milky ways, M&M’s(not even blue ones), jelly beans, marshmallow chicks, potato sticks, macaroni & cheese dinners(Fetuccine Alfredo included), Lucky Charms cereal ETCETERA!

Life began in a garden. Pop tarts, diet soda, pastries, giant bagels, banana nut muffins, fudge, baklava, lemon meringue pie, ice cream, cookies…they were not there! Neither was  I but neither were you and history tells us I know what I am talking about!

You will not find these foods recommended in the Bible or anywhere else. Along with the above junk foods, we have a list of allegedly healthy and weight loss products which belong in the category of junk foods since their sugar content is inappropriate to say the least. In one teaspoon of sugar there are 4gms of carbohydrates. Bearing that in mind, please follow along with me in regard to the following products: Ensure- (first 4 ingredients) water, sucrose,(all words that end in ose mean sugar)corn syrup(more sugar)maltodextrin(rice sugar).

The total- 14 ½ tspns. of sugar in Ensure. Slim Fast- 19 tspns. of sugar. Slim Fast/soy protein- 21 tspns. Boost- 17 tspns. Smoothie Smash- 22 ½ tspns. Consider the sweetening power of these amounts of sugar. If you were to prepare a drink for you or your family you would never add that much sugar. At least I hope you wouldn’t. While waiting to discuss labwork with the physician whose office I am connected with, I began a conversation with a woman who was seeing the doctor for the first time. Her foot was in a soft cast. Her foot surgery was cancelled while she lay on the operating table all prepped and ready to go under the anesthesia when low potassium and excess protein was discovered in her lab report.

So here she was trying to get answers from this doctor to her problem. She went on to say that she thought she might have diabetes since most of her family has it. Further, she suspected that 5 tspns. of sugar in her coffee might be too much. As well as all the bread and pasta she was consuming and all the candy she eats. Her foot surgery was directly related to a diabetic condition so she said. I listened intently, gave her some material I have written on the problems associated with excess sugar. I was disturbed by what she had to say, however that doesn’t quite cover it! Nutrition is a science and as with so many other sciences it is everchanging with new discoveries.

Just prior to meeting this woman, I came across a letter I had jotted down some time ago, which had left an impression on me. The letter, was written by the early physicist Galileo (1564-1642), twelve years before he died: My Dear Kepler - What do you say of the leading philosophers here, to whom I have offered a thousand times of my own accord to show my studies, but who with the lazy obstinacy of a serpent who has eaten his fill, have never consented to look at the planets or moon or telescope? Verily, just as serpents close their ears, so do men close their eyes to the light of truth.

The Letter was dated 1630. This woman’s health is in a serious state of illness caused by sugar and carbohydrate excesses and her eyes it seemed were wide open. Get serious about reading those nutrition labels at the market. Your only measure of control in regard to your health is what you put in your mouth! After that, your body takes control and there is virtually nothing you can do to stop the process which the body mysteriously and innately initiates. The safest foods are the foods with the least amount of processing - closest to their natural state. Basicbeginnings@aol.com