Download: Optimal Health Food Guide.pdf ~ 117 KB
Over the past several decades, federal food agencies in many countries have attempted to provide the public with resources designed to help people know what to eat in order to make healthy food choices. Unfortunately, these have largely failed to properly address and meet modern health challenges and optimal human nutrition needs. Whether you live in Canada, the US, or similar countries, most of these guides are strongly influenced by the corporate interests of various food industries and steer people towards diets that serve those interests. For more information on this, read my article Why Eating According to the Food Guide Does More Harm Than Good.
After over a decade of examining optimal human health and nutrition needs, in light of our modern-day challenges, I have therefore decided to create the Optimal Health Food Guide based on whole food, plant-based principles. As the name implies, this is a guide that has your best health and wellbeing in mind; not average, mainstream, or in moderation kind of health. It is meant to support you, not any given corporate, industrial, or political agenda.
The Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Optimal Health Food Guide takes into account both food choices and food quality, with a focus on both specific and general foods, as most appropriate. It takes into account nutrition for physical, mental, and emotional health, as well as optimal energy, vitality, and longevity. Within each category, it provides ample flexibility to best meet our personal unique needs and preferences. Though as a whole, it provides the optimal foundational diet for us as a human-animal species, living in current times. This being a high-quality, high nutrient-density, low-stress, whole-food, plant-based diet.
With our unique needs in mind, the Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Optimal Health Food Guide does not focus on quantities of foods or specific nutrients, as these need to be governed by our personal lifestyle needs. (i.e., age, activity levels, stress levels, lifestyle habits, health conditions, etc.) In this sense, it also takes into account holistic health principles that do not reduce nutrition down to isolated nutrients and calories but rather maintain the integrity and synergy of dynamic living systems. Typically, the more health-conscious we get and the more we eat a clean, optimal human diet, the more we become in tune with our body, knowing how much of any specific food to eat and when.
The Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Optimal Health Food Guide is also designed with a high level of practicality in mind to quickly, easily, and effectively help you know what foods to focus on and which to avoid. The guide is based on an easy green-yellow-red light system, where:
- green means that we can freely and abundantly eat the foods from this area
- yellow means that we should use some caution and discernment with foods from this area (whatever foods we choose to eat from this area (if any) we will need to align them with our personal priorities, such as health, social, environmental, or spiritual)
- red means that we should avoid foods from this area if we are interested in optimal health, healing, prevention, protection, and longevity
If any of the food recommendations on the guide are new, foreign, or unclear to you, I provide a comprehensive explanation that provides the reasoning behind all of the food choices and their categories in my book Healing & Prevention Through Nutrition.
Finally, although great care went into making sure this guide is as “ideal” and “timeless” as possible, the guide will be updated accordingly if any new significant or compelling evidence contradicts any of its recommendations.
The Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Optimal Health Food Guide is provided as a free download so that everyone can have access to knowing how to feed themselves for best health and wellbeing. You can use the guide personally, or print, or share it with others.