"GO PRO" ON PROBIOTICS

WARNING: This type of food may produce a balanced ‘bio–culture’ in the gut, a functioning digestive system and a sense of physical ease stemming from lessened inflammation throughout the body.  In some cases, daily use and developed habits of eating this food can lead to a ‘happier’ state of being.

 

Probiotic is a term for food that is ‘alive’, full of much-desired nutrients, vitamins and microflora known as ‘lactobacilli’ all of which boost the immune function of the body.    These elements alone aren’t the only cause of a ‘happy’ gut; an added advantage is that the microflora convert food into nutrients that are more easily absorbed and used by the body.  Probiotic foods contain live, HEALTHY bacteria that digest our food and create a ‘gut culture’ that fights the organisms that harm us.

Raw foods, fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kim chee (a Korean condiment), and certain yogurts contain ‘live’ cultures.   If you’ve had several courses of antibiotics over the past years, take the birth control pill and/or even ‘suffer’ from a general dis-ease in the gut, look to including probiotic foods in your daily diet as part of an overall regime for wellness.

There is always a danger in making assumptions about possible ‘happiness-making’ substances – or even a claim to know what happiness is- yet I will put my money on the idea that we can satiate ourselves and live more contently when we consciously choose, prepare and enjoy the very substance which is designed to keep us alive and well.

MODERN DIET,  MODERN DOOM 

Food is life.  Without it we die.   Yet, it is such an intuitive act, that we don´t necessarily think about what we eat.   Modern day diets in many parts of the world, including here, have given access to an abundance of choices as to what to eat. Whether to eat out or in, or eat Mexican or Asian is often the dictates the how we think about what to eat.  We eat what we are in the mood for and what we crave and desire.  We eat to feel satisfied.   We even eat to keep emotions down.  Yet, considering it as daily encounter with a ´help or hurt´ scenario, it becomes hard reminder that what we eat matters.  And, if what we eat is not real food or real sustenance for the body, then it a likely harmful.

So, what is real food?  And, what is not real food? (And, how did it get to even become a question for people?).  Modern history has taken the idea of omnivore to a new limit.  A large population has been introduced to new ´food like´ substances, or, if you will, have adapted to a new food creation because instead of scarcity which once ruled adaptation, over the past 50 years much of the developed world has incorporated new foods because of abundance.   Even where the abundance is not apparent, there is a ripple effect from where it is. 

Modern life offers an overwhelming choice in what to eat.  It´s the era of the uber-omnivores (and picky ones, as a result).   Where as before people ate when hungry, now people, in developed nations, eat throughout they day and tend to eat to feel satisfied.   They eat the ‘choice cuts’, and now expect a full basket of vegetables to be available year round thanks to growing imports from Mexican growers. People eat for pleasure and entertainment and to be social.  So much choice allows for this drastic change in the human diet.

However, now there is an emerging consciousness that much of the food choices in the supermarket aisles are not real foods.  And, no one contends that fresh food will always pack more nourishment then the canned or processed ´foods´ we find in the middle aisles.  The distinction between real food and food-like, means distinguishing between eating something that has grown, grazed or swam versus something which was chemically or commercially processed.   

As a school teacher I would often wonder if the kids in my classroom weren´t somehow ´telling´ me something when most would gladly grab a artificially colored blue drink and most would reject any food that was green and plant-based.   It seemed astounding that plant foods that had been a staple of human diet for millennia should be so readily rejected.  But, somehow ´blue drink´ is so eagerly chosen over green juice.

It’s no wonder that fad diets and media blitz so easily captivate the minds of so many.   It’s any wonder that we know what to eat at all.