In the Surgeon Generals report is contained an interesting
statement: "As the diseases of nutritional
deficiency have diminished, they have been replaced by diseases of
dietary excess and imbalance--
problems that now rank among the leading causes of illness and death in
the United States touch the
lives of most Americans, and generate substantial health care costs."
The reference to nutritional deficiency was in regard to the
availability of all kinds of foods today, as
opposed to scarcity of foods, or availability of sufficient quantities
of only specific foods in past
centuries, which caused deficiencies, leaving people vulnerable to
various kinds of diseases.
Among the diseases of dietary excess listed are: Coronary
heart disease, killing 500,000, some types
of cancer, killing thousands, stroke, killing 150,000, diabetes
mellitus, affecting over 11,000,000, and
atherosclerosis. (Also high blood pressure affects 58,000,000.) These
figures are old and would be
much higher today.
This is all attributed to diet. What we eat has a most
direct bearing on our physical well-being. We believe
that our physical health has a direct bearing on our Spiritual
well-being.
Although it is true that dietary excess and imbalance has
much to do with the major killer diseases which
are listed above, nutritional deficiency is still the major problem.
This is because of the way our food is
prepared to be palatable, to please the taste buds, instead of
supplying our nutritional needs. This is done
primarily through ignorance of what good nutrition is, and obviously,
good tasting items sell better. It's not
a conspiracy, just a lack of knowledge on the part of the suppliers and
the customers. The supplier provides
what sells best, and the customer buys what tastes best.
Important:
What follows is what we have experienced, or learned, and is not
to be construed to be
medical advice. We are not doctors, and have no medical
credentials. What we say is
what
we believe to be true,
and we believe it will be helpful to you. What you do
with it is up to you,
and you must assume all responsibility for its results.
Our Story
Beginning a number of years ago, my wife and I set out on a
course to find better nutrition for our bodies
in order to make us feel better and to guard against debilitating and
incurable diseases.
Ruth became a vegetarian about l978, eating mostly cooked
vegetables. I was eating mostly cooked
vegetables, with occasional meat when I ate outside the home.
Eliminating certain foods definitely made
an improvement in our health, but we were not satisfied with the
results.
From that beginning, we have gone through a number of steps,
each an improvement over our previous
diet, but it has taken several years to find what we believe to be the
best diet.
When I use the word "diet," I am not referring to being on a
"diet" as when someone wants to lose weight,
but I am referring to a lifetime lifestyle change of what we eat.
Weight loss is a side benefit. We are
constantly searching for ways to further improve an already excellent
nutritional program. When we find
improvements, we add them in.
The diet we are now eating is extremely simple, not a lot of
regimented things to do, and it gets continual,
outstanding
results.
So what
improvements have we seen since we changed our eating habits? Here are
some of them:
1.
We have had an improvement in our complexion, reduced blemishes, and
healthier hair.
2. We have assumed our normal body weight, that
is, we lost weight and I (Jim) lost my pot.
3. We both are more alert and our mental
abilities are enhanced. We are able to read
for longer periods without drowsiness. Neither uses any kind of
drugs or stimulants.
4. We sleep better, and get by on less sleep,
fall asleep more rapidly, awake more refreshed.
5. We have improved physical stamina, more energy
and feel good most of the time.
6. We have an improved outlook on life and feel
that we have actually somewhat reversed
the aging process in our bodies.
7. I (Jim) had a number of ailments when we
changed to our present way of eating. This
included three eye problems, frozen shoulder, prostate trouble,
hemorrhoids, kidney pain,
carpal tunnel syndrome, bleeding gums, leg pain, athelete's foot,
pulsation between collar
bones, overweight, drowsiness after meals, could not think as
clearly as when I was
younger, and weakness from a stroke which I had five years before.
All these have been
corrected through returning to basic foods instead of processed
ones, plus I lost thirty-five
pounds, settling to my normal body weight.
Ruth did not have any
obvious ailments when we began our present diet, but she had just
finished a series of
treatments by a Chiropractor for back pain. She has been free from
sickness since changing our eating habits.
Her general good health was apparently due in some part to not having
consumed animal and dairy products
for ten years, however she did lose twenty pounds after we went to our
present way of eating, and continues to
maintain her normal weight, and feel better.
We have heard many
testimonies of others saying that they have been cured of arthritis,
high blood pressure,
diabetes, hemorrhoids, cancer, heart disease, MS, and on and on. All by
simply changing their eating habits.
Will it work for you? We believe it will, to the degree that you apply
it. We believe that if you will eat the right
foods, you will give your body what it needs to heal itself, naturally,
as God designed it.
Hooray
for Hallelujah Acres
Where did we learn about this way of eating? As I indicated
before, we switched to a largely vegetarian diet
following my stroke in January of 1988, but we were eating mostly
cooked vegetables, grains and bread etc.
Ruth was strictly vegetarian and never cooked meat at
home. I ate meat when eating lunch away from home,
or at luncheon meetings I occasionally attended.
We lived in Virginia at the time, and we moved to Tennessee
in 1992. When we first arrived, our diet was bad
because we were living in motels, and eating-out every meal, for three
months, while we searched for a home.
In the Spring of 1993, Ruth found Hallelujah Acres listed in
the Shepherd's Guide, so she called and talked to
retired preacher, George Malkmus, who was the owner of the place. He
invited us to attend a short lecture and
video tape which he had scheduled. We went to the lecture, and his
words rang so true when he began to talk
bout returning to the original diet that God gave man in the
Garden of Eden. He was saying that food should
be left as near to its natural form as possible, that when we
try to improve on what God has made, all we do is
make it less nutritious.
We read George's book," Why Christians Get Sick" which tells
of his being healed of colon cancer by changing
his diet. I highly recommend "Why Christians Get Sick," and he also has
a new book, "God's Way to Ultimate
Health." At the end of this writing, we will tell you where to get
them. We also read several books by Dr. N. W.
Walker, and found the two to be in agreement. Since that time, we have
studied as much on raw nutrition as we
can find. We will be forever grateful to George and Rhonda Malkmus for
introducing us to this way of eating.
One of the things I learned from George early on is that
there is a vast difference in food that is raw and food that
has been processed, whether by cooking or otherwise. One is dead
and one is alive. I'll let you figure-out which
is which.
It is necessary, when processing food to sell to the public
to stop all enzyme activity, and to kill all bacteria, both
good and bad. Otherwise it would spoil before it could be used. This
means it must be heated, canned, pickled,
irradiated or preserved in some way to prevent spoilage. Otherwise,
there would be problems with the FDA.
These processed foods are deficient in nutrition and have harmful
additives which add to our health problems.
What's the
difference?
At this point, I think
it necessary to explain why live food is better than dead food. It's
really not that hard to
understand, LIFE BEGETS LIFE, its that simple. Live food still
has the nutrition in it. In general, processed food
has most of the vitamins and all of the enzymes destroyed, and the
protein deranged to a form which is not
suitable for proper nutrition.
Our bodies are made of
living cells (about a hundred trillion). These cells are being replace
constantly (estimate:
hundreds of millions per minute). Our bodies are completely rebuilt in
an estimated seven years. Surface cells are
replace weekly, heart muscles take a few months, and bone cells take
three to five years or more. These living
cells were designed to utilize live food to maintain their quality.
Each time a cell is
replaced, it is subject to change. Proper nutrition improves the cells,
but poor nutrition makes
them weaker. Weak cells are more prone to become diseased. Our immune
system is directly related to the
quality of nutrition we put into our bodies.
Besides nutritional
foods, our bodies have other needs, oxygen makes up 96% or our
nutritional need. When we
are out-of-doors where the air is fresh, we need to breath deeply and
allow as much good oxygen into our lungs
as possible. You know it makes you feel better, and it will also make
you healthier.
Water is another key
element, but not the chlorinated/floridated water we find in our tap. A
great source of natural
water is raw vegetables. We find that we rarely ever get thirsty on
this diet. We are getting the water from two big
salads a day (about 8 oz. from each), and three glasses of carrot juice
a day (8 oz. each), and if we do get thirsty
after eating some cooked food, we drink organic apple juice, or steam
distilled water. [By-the-way, this diet is not
necessarily all raw, we do eat some cooked food. I'm not altogether
sure that its the right thing to do, but we eat it
for the enjoyment, and keep it to a minimum.]
We are told that
floride in drinking water can cause thyroid to be inactive which among
other things, results in
weight gain. I heard recently that some water systems were introducing
ammonia into the system to kill some
kinds of bacteria which the chlorine was missing. I can't imagine what
that would taste like, or what it would do
to the human body.
The reason we use
steam distilled water is because it has most of the harmful ingredients
removed. The
minerals in tap water are inorganic. The body works better with organic
materials. We depend on vegetable
sources to supply organic minerals, i.e., those that have come through
a living plant to be changed from
inorganic, as found in the ground, to organic, rather than getting them
from the water we drink. There is no
nutrition in distilled water, its just wet and supplies our need for
liquids.
Vigorious Exercise
helps to control our weight, decreases the risk of heart disease,
improves our mental
outlook, and makes us feel better. Start out by walking enough to get
your heart rate up and keep it up for
twenty minutes. Increase your speed a little each day, and gradually
increase your distance.
Avoiding stress is also of
great benefit.
Fearfully and Wonderfully made
The Bible tells us that we are "fearfully and wonderfully
made," Psalm 139:14. Our bodies can handle all kinds
of extreme situations when called on to do so, but those extremes can
be tolerated for a finite period of time
only, then we experience what we call exhaustion. This occurs
emotionally and physically.
Stressing our bodies through nutritional abuse has a similar
result. Our bodies will try very hard to extract all
the nutrition they can from whatever we put in as food, but there comes
a time that we are torn-down so
completely from improper diet and, literally, cell starvation, that our
systems begin to fail. Once the liver fails,
cancer can easily set-in.
What Causes Deteriorating Health?
We call it the "American diet." The main problem is lack of
proper nourishment added to the intake of "food"
items which pollute our bodies rather than feed them.
What is wrong with the American diet? It's quite simple.
Nearly everything we eat is almost totally devoid of
nutrition. Eighty-five to ninety percent of it is cooked. When
food is heated above 130 degrees, all enzymes and all vitamin C is
destroyed, along with essential amino
acids L. Tryptophan and L. Lysine and 80-83% of the B vitamins, and the
protein is damaged.
When the life is cooked out of something, it becomes
inorganic rather than organic. The human body can only
utilize organic materials to properly nourish it.
Too often, we prepare food to suit our taste, not our
nutritional needs. I believe that this is why we hear of very
young people having heart attacks and strokes. The American diet is
getting worse, not better. Fast foods are
at the center of this decline.
There are more injections going into cattle, with drugs that
will reap a harvest of degradation to the human body.
The way foods are prepared is a disgrace. Deep FAT frying, barbecuing,
pickling, charcoaling, all kinds of ways
that add carcinogins and substances that our bodies cannot properly
digest. And most of it is done in
hydrogenated oils, or animal fat, which add cholesterol to our already
abused bodies.
Many of our health problems which we are told are hereditary
are really dietary. We eat what our parents ate,
and inherit their ills only because of the diet.
I must be quick to add, however, that our bodies are able to
make miraculous improvements when we return to
proper nutrition. They are capable of building stronger cells with each
new generation when the building blocks
for health are present in our diets.
What we need is to eat as much of our food raw as
possible.