It's Not What You Eat, But How Much You Digest...

How we digest is often an overlooked factor in our attention towards healthy eating.  Despite a well-balanced diet, if we are having trouble digesting our food, we may actually be malnourished.

We may be eating “the right things” but not absorbing  them. Have you ever found yourself more tired after a meal than before it? If digestion is weak, our body will have to draw energy away from other systems to use towards digestion, leaving us feeling tired or fog brained.

The digestive enzymes needed for the initial breakdownof  food particles are contained in our saliva. By chewing our food properly we are able to assimilate the nutrients form our foods better.

Other digestive enzymes are present in living foods (foods that have not been processed and would spoil if left out.) These enzymes have been thoroughly destroyed in almost all processed foods, despite being marketed as healthy. Eating a diet high in processed foods puts a huge strain on the pancreas that now needs to manufacture the enzymes lost in processing in order to enable digestion. Since the pancreas is also involved in the regulation of stress hormones, a diet high in processed foods directly lowers our resistance to stress.

It is a good idea to minimize eating and drinking anything pasteurized, as by definition, pasteurization heats the food to the point where everything that was alive in the food is now dead. These days, most store-bought juices, most milk and dairy, and most cans of vegetables are pasteurized, so check labels and buy unpasteurized when possible. While raw milk is not readily available, cheeses made from raw milk are becoming more popular. Look for local brands of orange juice that are unpasteurized and be sure to include fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet.

During spring, be sure to not overcook your food. Lightly steam vegetables and remove from the heat before the color changes from bright to dull. When eating animal products such as red meat, enjoy pasture-fed, non-medicated meat. During spring it is best to reduce our normal intake of animal proteins.

In order to improve digestion and assimilation, we need to eat more foods rich in enzymes. Adding raw foods to each meal helps, as well as consuming fermented foods. Lacto-fermentation is an ancient method to preserve food (prior to the invention of refrigeration,) and the fermentation process greatly increases the vitamin content and enzymes needed for digestion. Consuming fermented vegetables, dairy, grains and meat also promotes healthy flora in the intestine, which also aids in the assimilation of the food. Many common foods are fermented, such as cheese, yogurt, buttermilk, tempeh, sauerkraut, pickles, pickled ginger that comes with sushi, miso, kefir, and corned beef. (When eating fermented dairy, look for unpasteurized raw milk products.)

If you are interested in reading more on the topic, Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook is a great resource for your library.