The Natural Way: a plan for clean eating

Mary-Ann Shearer's eating plan The Natural Way has been a great influence in my life style and my 12 principles. It is a basic food combining diet that separates protein and starches. Fruits are divided into sweet, acid and sub-acid and are eaten separately from other foods. The diet supports low dairy and wheat intake and discourages the consumption of meat and eggs. It also advocates avoiding sugar, caffeine and other chemicals. Instead it promotes eating as much fruit and vegetables as possible especially raw.

The Natural Way eating plan's greatest asset, in my view, is its relative simplicity when getting started: just 5 steps to natural health i.e. without supplements and chemicals. The biggest difference between her and me is that I encourage the use of natural organic whole food supplements while she discourages the use of supplements all together. You might want to check out my reasons why you should supplement.

5 steps to natural health

Here are the simple 5 steps to get you started on "The Natural Way"

Eat at least one fruit only meal per day.
Snack only on fresh or dried fruit or raw vegetables.
Do not eat more than one protein meal per day.
Start every cooked meal with raw vegetables.
Do not eat a concentrated starch and a concentrated protein in the same meal.

I met with Mary-Ann's ideas for the first time nearly 4 years ago when my little boy was about to pop out of my tummy. Her wonderfully insightful book 'Healthy Kids the Natural Way' was an eye opener to me and I resolved to use as many of her ideas as I could. When little Benjamin turned out to be dairy, wheat and soy intolerant, it became more than an interesting perspective, it became a life line. You can read more about my struggle in my article on where to start supplementing'.

Recently I have rediscovered the perks and promises of this eating plan when I attended a talk by Bev Wium, a Natural Way consultant. I have reintroduced some of the principles to our diet to great effect. Bev had some wonderfully practical ideas that I would like to share with you. Her talk was called "Monsters and Angels" and centred on how to cut out all the bad stuff in the food our kids love to eat. She has been a Natural Way consultant for the last 14 years and practises what she preaches. Her own kids are now 24 (son) and 21 (daughter). Here are some of the gems from her talk.

Practical tips from the 'Natural Way' to cut out the bad stuff:

Instead of caffeinated fizzy drinks like Coke and (God forbid) Red Bull, buy Grapetizer or Appletizer instead. Caffein upsets the nervous system, the brain and the heart and who wants that for their kids. Who am I kidding? Who wants that for themselves? Enjoy more peace in the home and quieter nights by using the fruit only substitutes.
Refined sugar controls the emotions especially for some people. Take this quick test to ascertain if our bodies react emotionally to sugar. Tick the ones that are true for you:
- I really like sweet foods.
- I eat a lot of sweets.
- I am very fond of bread, pasta or cereal.
- I now have or had a problem with drugs / alcohol.
- One or both my parents are alcoholic.
- One or both my parents are especially fond of sugar.
- I am overweight, or battle to loose weight.
- I continue to be depressed.
- I over react to stress.
- I have a history of anger and/or weepiness that surprises even me.
Bev admits: "I am definitely sugar-sensitive. If you answered yes to 3 or more of those questions, you probably are as well! Sugar will have an abnormal effect on your blood sugars and ultimately your behaviour. Your child may be in the same boat. Unfortunately, bread, pasta, alcohol could have the same detrimental effect on your behaviour as sugar does - but that is a whole other story!"

Now don't think you can solve this by using artificial sweeteners. They are mostly chemical compounds that are bad for you. Aspartame, which is widely used in many products including health shakes and sugar-free sweets, has been proven to increase appetite in the best case scenarios and in the worst can cause seizures. Honey is your best kind of sweetener and you can also use fructose in moderation. I, Petro, also make ample use of dates, raisins and apple juice.
Concerning additives, preservatives and colourants: buy Windhoek Beer instead of other brands since it does not contain sulfur dioxide. And if you want a 'clean' tomato sauce go for All Gold.
Margarine: Just stay away, would you. It contains not only colours and preservatives, but transfat i.e. vegetable oil that has been heated four times. It is cancer forming and bad for you and your kids. Rather use soft butter spreads (check the labels) or mix your own by blending 2 parts butter with one part olive oil.

Bev also talked about dairy and other animal proteins like meat and eggs. The bottom line? Cancer. She mentioned a book by T. Colin Campbell called 'The China Study' in which, the author, proved how animal protein especially dairy causes cancer in mice and how the mice heal themselves the moment their diets are changed to exclude the animal protein. It is hard to change this aspect of our diets, I know, but it can be done and it should. My family and I are now completely dairy-free and have meat just once a week. You can do it too.

In closing Bev shared a little info on how heavy metals like lead and mercury is implicated once again in ADD and ADHD. Get rid of the mercury in your amulgam dental fillings, moms. Bev told of how her memory loss improved and her fatigue melted away as she went to get the heavy metals removed from her system. Details on all these issues can be found in the book 'Healthy Kids the Natural Way' by Mary-Ann Shearer. It tells you of a great way to ensure your own health and that of your kids from pregnancy through babyhood, breast feeding, introducing new foods and feeding your tot. The book is well worth owning and is available in most bookshops country wide.

The Natural Way and the Raw Food Diet

You may or may not know that I am currently on a Raw Food pluck. I am just convinced that killing 80% of the nutrition in your food by heating it is unwise. 'The Natural Way' fits in very well with raw food principles because like the raw food diet it is largely dairy and wheat free and propagates eating lots of raw fresh food.

However, cooking is not considered a complete no-no. Yet, if it was not for this inclusion of warm food, I would not have survived the freezing Cape winter. My family and I battled with the raw food diet this winter and I reached for Mary-Ann's recipe book number one. It helped me get warm ideas without compromising too much. Because Mary-Ann too supports the inclusion of as much raw food as possible, many of her recipes would give the raw option like "use canned or sprouted chick peas". In my recipe section are 2 recipes that I have adjusted from this recipe book to incorporate more raw food than the original version. These are the Seed-stuffed Butternut and the Carrot and sweet potato casserole.

Another big difference between 'The Natural Way' and raw food is that Mary-Ann uses butter and cream in ample amounts. Her reasoning is that neither of these contain animal protein, just the fat. However, my family has chosen to ditch these too since my husband, younger son and mom all suffer from hay fever, blocked noses or flemmy throats when they use dairy. The raw food diet replaces dairy with nuts, especially almonds, and coconut.

Finally, on a practical note: I find food combining rather complicated while the simple principle of eating raw food is easier to follow. Most raw meals will support the food combining principles because very little use is made of complex carbohydrates. However, fruit is not so much consumed on its own. Many smoothies contain fruit and vegetables as well as fruit from different groups together. Fruit is also often mixed with nuts.

Whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on the food-slide, keep playing with your food until you find what works for you. Keep in mind, though that 'what works for you' does not just refer to what is convenient and practical, it includes what works to keep you healthier and more energetic for longer. If your life situation changes, or you get tired of one kind of eating plan, try something else, but keep going. You can both master the food-slide and enjoy the ride.

Petro Janse van Vuuren

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The Natural Way: a plan for clean eating

5 steps to natural health

Practical tips from the 'Natural Way' to cut out the bad stuff:

The Natural Way and the Raw Food Diet

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