Follow These Tips to Start Healthier Eating!

Scott: You've talked about it earlier, and basically nutrition is the base where people need to start.  How do they start eating better?  What are some of the things that they need to do?  I know that it's talked about a lot at the conference here.  I know, well for instance, fat is a big topic that used to be a no-no, now it's, we should eat them, but which kind... I mean where do people start when it comes to just getting a better diet?

Philip Weeks: Yes, I mean it can be very confusing, can't it?  If you go into a book store and look at the section on nutrition and you can get more and more and more confused until... what are you supposed to eat?  Well, I've talked about, you've got to eat food, you've got to eat food you can prepare, you've got to eat food that you know that is food, that you can recognize as food.  So that's the first thing.  I mean everybody's different, but not using refined carbohydrates is one thing.  So we want to be using, eating more of a low glycemic index diet.  Food that takes longer to digest and therefore we're not getting the peaks of blood sugar, like we would do with instant, sort of refined carbohydrates.  But I'm a real fan of correct amounts of saturated fat.  So a low fat diet I think is detrimental for our health.  We need a certain amount, and obviously here at the conference we're talking about ghee and they're talking about the importance of certain kinds of saturated fats.  So that's a key.

Not cooking in vegetable oil is a basic.  There's a recent study showing that the ingestion of vegetable oil could contribute to cancer and it could be carcinogenic.  So it's a big area, but we should be eating, you know fundamentally a lot of vegetables.  If I think of a plate, half of the plate should be vegetables, really.  We should be eating vegetables, we should be eating really good quality protein, we should be having good quality fats. But if you think about the increase in sugar intake has been massive.  I was looking at some stats and they were talking about how the average person in a year would have something like 70 kilos of refined sugar in a year.  That would be 36, 37 teaspoons a day.  If we eat that amount of sugar, we drive inflammation, because of the impact it has on insulin.  And we drive all kinds of chronic inflammation in the body.  

So the first thing is cutting out refined carbohydrates, cutting out sugar, having good quality fats and protein.  Not drinking sodas, not drinking fruit juice.  Drinking waters and teas and basic things.  But unfortunately, to eat all of those things, often we have to be cooking ourselves or cooking properly, rather than buying convenience food.