Wizard Recipes

Often the long nearness between various food and those that are consuming them creates complex communication systems along the food chain, so that the creatures come to know that certain elements are edible guided by taste, smell and color. Very often, even foods emit these signals, because it is in their interest to be eaten.

The fact that a fruit is ripe is signaled by a specific odor (a seductive aroma that reaches quite large distances), color (a shade that stands out from the green mass) or taste (usually sweet).

Usually, maturity, is when the plant seeds are ready to unwind and to germinate, is the period when the fruit has the highest concentration of nutrients and therefore the interests of plants (spreading the seeds) coincides with (the feeding) of the consumer. As a result of the previously received signals from various fruits and vegetables, our body has established that a fruit is edible, it occurs for enzymes and acids required for its decomposition. Health depends largely on the body’s ability to decode these biological signals: this fruit seems ripe, that there seems altered, that cow looks good.

This process is much easier when you know for a long time a particular food product and much more difficult if the food that you have to deal with was created just to fool your senses, using, for example, artificial flavors or synthetic  sweeteners. Food products that are fooling our senses are difficult issues of Western food to manage. It is important to note that the ecological relationships involve, at least in the first instance, those creatures that eat whole foods, not the nutrients or chemical elements contained in them.

Even if, eventually, once they have reached in our body, food is decomposed into simple chemical elements such as maize, for example, is mostly reduced to simple sugars, the whole food qualities are not unimportant. For example, the quantity and the structure of corn fiber will determine the speed with which will be released and absorbed the sugars that it contains, this is an essential aspect for the metabolism of insulin. A chemist will tell you that once in the blood the corn starch will turn into glucose, but such a reductionist view overlooks the complex and variable process that it assumes this transformation. Despite the nutritional labels, not all carbs are equal.

In other words, our body has an old and lasting relationship with maize, but not with the corn syrup with high fructose. Perhaps at some point humans will create this type of relationship with corn syrup with high fructose (as people will develop superhuman insulin systems to cope with the regular flow of pure fructose and glucose), but for now, this interaction make us sick because our body doesn’t know how to deal with all biological innovations.

In the same way, the human bodies that can handle chewing coca leaves - an old relationship met between indigenous and coca plant in some parts of South America -can not cope with cocaine or crack cocaine, even if those are three substances containing the same active elements. Maybe that reductionism, as a way of understanding, is a harmless vision or even required vision in terms of food and drugs, but the applied reductionism means to reduce food or narcotic plants to the chemical elements that they contain, and this can create problems.

Once animals could also synthesize some antioxidants, including vitamin C. But the rich plants nourishment of our ancestors content so much vitamin C that we lost in time this ability to produce this composite, maybe because of the natural selection which tends to give any unnecessary element up that is metabolically costly. (Plants are a rich source of antioxidants because they need those for the oxygen management, produced during the photosynthesis)

Of course this was a great evolution for plants, because people have become completely dependent on them for procurement of an essential nutrient and therefore, people did those vitamin C producers lots of favors, spreading there genes and extending there habitat. The antioxidants like vitamin C has an important role in the relationship between humans and plants even this is less noticeable. Our biologically plant dependency is ancient and profound, so it’s not at all surprising that plants are beneficially.

There are many studies which are proving that rich nourishment in fruits and vegetables is reducing the risk of death in case of all occidental diseases. In countries where people consume daily a pound ore more of fruits and vegetables, the rate of cancer is twice smaller then in the United States. We also know that vegetarians are less disposed to all the occidental diseases and therefore they live longer (semi-vegetarians the so called “flexitarians”- are as healthy as vegetarians). We do not know very well why this happens. It is almost sure that the plant antioxidants protect us, but this could be valid for omega-3 fat acids (other essential nutrients which our body can not produce) for fibers and for other elements and synergic relations of plants compositions, unknown jet.

As shown on the studies of whole grain it is very possible that vegetal aliments are more than the amount of composing nutrients. But probably the advantages of plant based nourishment aren’t based only on the content: vegetal products (with the exception of seeds) have the energy density lower then the rest of nourishments. Eating especially veggies you will consume probably less calories (which will protect you from many diseases). Seeds are the exception that shows us why it is important to consume more leaves then seeds; even if unrefined seeds like whole grain and fruits with a hard shell can be very nutritious, they contain more calories, because there biological role is to deposit energy.

If you can, eat in most of the cases food, no matter what this food would require, probably everything would be ok. One of the knowledge that we can draw from the amazing traditional food variance of the entire world is that we can feed extremely varied food, as long as it is food. There have been and still are many healthy types of nourishment rich in fat or healthy low fat nourishments, as long as they are based on integral food not processed food. But there are some integral nourishment that are better than others and some ways to produce and combine them in different menus that are worth trying. This is why the following section will propose some politics regarding what you eat over and beyond “food”.

Feed yourselves mostly with plants and especially with leaves

Scientists haven’t reached a consensus regarding the benefits of plants- is it because of the antioxidants? Is it because of the fibers? Is it because of the Omega-3 fat acids? But it is sure that all scientists agreed that plants are probably beneficial for our health and certainly, they don’t harm. In the interviews that I realized with different nutritionists they all agreed over de benefits of a meal based on plants. Even those nutritionists tempered by decades of disagreement and confusion regarding the recommendations for nutrition, answered my question” ok, but how are your certainties now?”

In a variation on the theme” eat more plants” (Marion Nestle was a little reserved: “it’s obvious that plants don’t harm”)

It is not hard to observe that plants are good for us, but from the evolutionary point of view, the explications are the fact that they are our source of Vitamin C and antioxidants.

Our ancestors had the biological capacity to produce vitamin C, an essential nutrient.

Like other antioxidants, Vitamin C (or ascorbic acid) is beneficial for our health from at least two points of view. A part of the routine processes of our body, among others the cellular metabolism and the protective inflammation mechanism, produce “oxygen radicals”- oxygen atoms with one odd electron and so with a high chemical reactivity that can generate a lot of problems. Free radicals are involved in many health problems, including cancer and different ageing problems (the output of free radicals is increasing with the ageing) Antioxidants like Vitamin C absorb and stabilizes free radicals before they can make havoc. But this is not the only good thing of antioxidants. In addition, they stimulate the liver which produces the necessary enzymes for the decomposition of antioxidants, enzymes that, once produced, decompose other substances, including different toxins like it. In this way antioxidants contribute to the dangerous chemical neutralization, including the cancerous ones, so if your diet contains several types of antioxidants, so much more toxins will be neutralized in your body. That’s why it’s important to eat as many sorts of plants possible: all contain different antioxidants, so they will help the body to remove different types of toxins. (As rich in toxin the environment is, as many plants you have to consume)