Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. -- Hippocrates, father of medicine, 431 B.C.
Eat Food. Not Too much. Mostly Plants. -- Michael Pollan, renowned food expert and journalist, 2007 A.D.
The healing properties of food have been reported by cultures worldwide throughout history. However, the past decade has presented an explosion of clinical research to show specifically what health benefits individual foods can offer, identifying the various nutrients and phytochemicals associated with these benefits.
Many fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed whole foods have properties that can benefit our health. Studies in the past decade have taken nutritional research beyond protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. Chemicals in the plants called phytochemicals have been a specific focus in the past decade, offering benefits such as cancer prevention, cholesterol reduction, and hormone regulation, to name a few.
There is truly a cornucopia of nutritional benefits that have been discovered. Here are a few "superfoods" that have received a lot of press in the past decade for their research-supported health benefits:
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Thomas Goetz: Cancer Is a Preventable Disease -- So Why Don't We Prevent It?
You've been a great influence on me and my family. Thank you so much Patricia!
"Raw" honey in the stores are **NOT** raw, as they are heated up to 160 degrees, per gov't standards, so they are to be avoided, unless you use it for tea or anything that is heated. "Raw" and heated honeys are, indeed, sugars, radicalized ones, at that.
The really healthy honey that you want is: UNHEATED honey -- the kind that has NEVER been heated, so those are the ones that are specifically labeled as such in health food stores and they are almost always a beige-colored honey that is NOT transparent. Unfiltered and unheated is the best.
Unheated honey is 85% enzymes; the rest of it sugars.
Heated honey is nearly 100% radicalized sugars, so it's not nearly as healthy.
I buy my honey from a local beekeeper, by the 5-gallon buckets and go through a lot of honey -- keeps me totally healthy!
I like to mix up walnuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, almonds, unheated honey and cinnamon in a bowl and eat that. Delicious!
There are no proven health benefits to eating honey, raw or otherwise, though there are plenty of anecdotes that are worthless as proof.
See http://www.prlog.org/10235925-nbc-reports-drinking-herbal-tea-leads-to-longer-healthier-life.html
http://www.americantearoom.com/caffeinefree.html
Honey is full of pollen with who-knows how many micronutrients. Again, a small amount is healthy but more isn't.
Nothing about red rice or the discoveries from the sea; disappointing there but America's about 30 years behind the rest of the world, to be charitable.
Chocolate has negative properties too. But OK, let's cut ourselves some slack.
Honey however is, besides the nice things mentioned, SUGAR. Comparable with poison. Unless you have a specific, temporary reason for using it, better live without it.
One thing I have learned is that one-size-does not fit all. What is good for one person's health may not be beneficial for another's.
as to honey and sugar, the sweetness in honey is very different from commercial sugars you consume. It is a natural item which is actually beneficial. One point: many producers of honey around the world have become greedy by spreading sugar in beehives, making the bees lazy and the produced honey full of (about 40-70%) sugar. Make sure you can trust the producer. Also, just as in the photo, you should consume the honey with its wax and not the strained type.
I am in my mid-70's and have been consuming all the 10 items listed as our basic food for many decades (living in the Mediterranean area helps). I would also add Olive Oil to the list in place of any other oils for cooking and otherwise.
heres the Pew study
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=490#3
FYI
http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/04/who_is_patricia_fitzgerald_and.php