Foundation. Nutrition.

Health Pyramid

 A good foundation is the basis for anything meaningful and also necessary if you require lasting and beneficial results. 

 This is true for most things in life and is essential when we intend to work on our diet in order to become healthier or prolong our health and wellbeing.

 The foundation for the nutrition part of the pyramid is WHOLE grains; I put the word WHOLE in capitals because it is the most important part of the statement.

 Approximately one hundred years ago our western diets were irrevocably changed by the invention of the steel roller mill. Up to the time of its adoption grain milling was not as efficient, much of the husk of the grain along with the germ and most of the lipids and sterols, vitamins and minerals in the grains were left in the flour after milling, .This had advantages and disadvantages. The advantage was that the goodness and essential nutrients and roughage or fibre remained in the meal and flour that were then processed into bread and cereal products. The disadvantage was that both the milled flour and the finished products had very short shelf life, the lipids and sterols (grain oils) tended to go rancid quickly when no longer protected by the husk of the grain after milling.

This posed a problem for modern city folk that no longer lived on the farm near their basic staple food source. The steel roller mill solved that problem, because it could mill the grain to much finer tolerances. The husks and hulls and germ of the grain could be easily and completely removed, and the remaining starch finely milled. Without the grain oils, most of the vitamins and minerals the flour and the finished product had vastly increased shelf life, at the expense of human nutrition!

Of course the nutrition does not go to waste; it is processed into many by-products that are sold separately as animal feed, and other products! The human food chain was essentially broken, without the grain oils our diets were deficient. Of course we compensated in other ways, but without the essential grain oils in our daily diets we opened ourselves up to a vast array of dis-eases that have been attacking us ever since!

Daily use of whole grain foods are essential to our health as they ensure that cell membranes can function optimally. They support the cell’s ability to receive other nutrients, absorb and utilize them appropriately, export important metabolites and properly eliminate cellular waste. If our cells are healthy, we are healthy. Unhealthy cells are unable to process nutrients necessary to promote physical well being.