Education About Food & Nutrition Increases Wellness

Many people I see in underground fast food malls at lunch in the financial center of Toronto are eating sushi, chicken salads with grains, or healthy full-course dinners with a salad. I noticed this as early as the 80s (except for the sushi) while enjoying my favorite hamburgers and cheese danishes at lunch each day. But over the decades, I became better educated about food. Other boomer friends seemed to know that 'we are what we eat', intrinsically, but I did not. I never ate healthy, and I rarely cooked.

I simply chose unhealthy food once I was on my own because it tasted so good - and it was cheap. For many years it didn't seem to register with me that what I ate had an effect on everything else in my life and how I felt about it.

Later, it wasn't Jamie Kennedy or any other celebrity who finally got me on the track to healthy eating. It was an allergy clinic! After years of suffering from allergies as a teen, my son was treated at The Allergy Clinic in 2006 when they looked at his diet rather than give him allergy injections. Our family went through intense nutritional counselling as a result and I now don't touch bread or wheat. My recommended diet now consists of 4-day rotations of chicken, shellfish, meat or legume, fish. With these 4 dinners go the following grains & vegetables: brown rice, buckwheat, sweet potato, quinoa. Then all kinds of vegetables and fruits are added like spinach, collard greens, romaine lettuce, lemons, apples, pears, bananas, blueberries, carrots, parsnips, etc. My son's allergies were corrected after 2 years on this diet.

I realized that there are a lot of resources about nutrition out there. Some of the ones I rely on are:

• http://www.drweil.com/
• http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/
• http://www.moosewoodcooks.com/cookbook-store/