Clean Food for Clean People: The Formula for Maximizing Our Health, Energy, Longevity, and Beauty, While Minimizing Our Environmental Impact.

By Denisse Lashley

A major transformation is needed to increase people's health, to avoid illnesses rather than to patch them, to preserve nature, to respect animal life, and to deliver quality food to a growing world population. Clean Food For Clean People explains how different foods impact our body. It shows how we can make our “traditional” eating habits evolve toward healthy ones. It explains a transformation in seven stages, which we can implement at our own pace. It includes easy cooking techniques with a variety of seasonings, which will allow us to prepare tasty and nutritious dishes during the journey. Ultimately, it provides a unique formula for choosing our daily meals efficiently and knowledgeably. Clean Food For Clean People includes practical tips on fitness, sleep, and body care. It will guide us to gradually move toward a balanced nutrition pattern, which includes more and more fresh produce, and a solid lifestyle in the pursuit of total health, energy, beauty, performance, and sustainability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483481234

Book preview

LASHLEY

Copyright © 2018 by Denisse Lashley

All rights reserved. All text, images, formulas, charts, and graphs are the author’s production. Copyrighted to ensure that people personally use the information in this book following the entirety of its principles; and never commercially, self-promoting, partially, in a misrepresented or an out-of-context manner. The author claims written permission for reproducing or transmitting any part of this book by any means unless it is a constructive and beneficial sourced review using only a brief quote from it (less than a hundred words). For non-remunerated personal educational purposes in financially challenged places, please copy, distribute, and also mention source acknowledgment

Disclaimer: This book is the product of personal observations, realizations, confirmations, and experiences summed up in best practices. It is solely and entirely at the discretion of the reader to observe and correctly apply its principles; it is by no means an equivalent to medical advice.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8125-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8124-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8123-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018902179

Structuring by William Cobert

Graphic Design by Giulio Raspagliesi

Headshot Photography by Graham Swindell

Food and Fitness Photography by Alison Vieira

Editing Support by Brenda English and Laura Manni

Functional Training Modeling by Jon Mangogna

Proofreading by Vicky Twyford

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 04/26/2018

To those who search and want to find:

Don’t let the mind sabotage—it likes it when you succeed.

Change is possible

A major transformation is needed to make people more healthy, to avoid illnesses rather than to patch them, to preserve nature, to respect animal life, and to deliver quality food to a growing world population.

The change has to be global, from the agriculture sector through packaging, conserving, and distributing, all the way to consuming fresh and healthy food.

Governments, academics, packaged-goods companies, and retail and HoReCa sectors, including fast-food chains, have the responsibility and a perfect opportunity to research, reinvent, implement, and be financially successful while improving well-being around the globe.

Decision makers in public and private sectors need to accept this challenge to re-engineer the global food chain entirely.

Denisse.jpg

Profile

Denisse Lashley obtained a degree in Industrial Engineering in Venezuela and is an alumna of IMD (International Institute for Management Development) in Lausanne, Switzerland. She gained experience in analyzing and improving production flows in the aluminum, oil and gas, and software development industries.

Life has taken her to all sorts of places around the globe, from virgin savannahs and forests, preparing Aboriginal dishes and foraging exotic fruits, to open-air markets and haute-cuisine restaurants, exchanging approaches with locals and Michelin-starred chefs alike. She has been hands-on in kitchens and orchards since the age of six.

Denisse has always been passionate about healthy living, and two decades ago she decided to combine her knowledge of process optimization and quality food to explore the behavior of the human body on different types of food and food patterns.

Denisse, who presently lives with her husband and two children in Costa Rica, was determined to discover an enjoyable way to eat that allowed her to reach the highest possible level of health while respecting our planet and all sentient beings.

Perspective

Earth’s moon controls our ocean tides and stabilises our entire atmospheric system. It is tidally locked so as to show the same face to the Earth at all times, and remarkably influences the life cycle of all living creatures on Earth.

Our oceans are connected by a global conveyor belt that continuously circulates and mixes all ocean waters. This thermohaline circulation is driven by wind, heat and salinity differences. The ocean food chain is fully influenced by it. 

Alfred Wegner, a German meteorologist, postulated continental drift back in 1912. This was not accepted by the world’s geologists and civil engineers until the late 1950s when overwhelming proof was finally accepted. Only then was it understood that subduction of tectonic plates enabled M9 level earthquakes to occur as hundreds of kilometres of plate edges stuck and released. Too late for those nuclear power plants like Fukushima Daiichi that were built to lesser seismic specifications in the 1960s however, and finally commissioned in 1971. The March 11, 2011 M9.0 quake and 10 metre high tsunami overwhelmed reactor cooling systems and destroyed the entire nuclear complex. 

Jupiter has 300 times the mass of Earth, and a volume in excess of 1,000 Earths. It is a planetary system in its own right and has at least 67 moons that we currently know of. Being so large and massive, Jupiter has had a significant gravitational effect on the formation and evolution of planet Earth.

If only we knew what we already know. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Our knowledge today is so specialised and siloed that we are unable to gain an holistic view of the fully integrated system. In fact, everything in the cosmos is connected, everything is moving, and everything is transforming - yet we treat the parts as separate sub-systems that are entirely isolated and unconnected.

The great challenge of science in the 21st Century is to put back all the pieces again - to reintegrate the sciences, natural and social, into an holistic whole. No time to wait around, this is something we need to commence right now. We are already living in a world with over 7 billion inhabitants, difficult social and natural interactions, and frequent natural and human caused disasters. Science will be at its best when it learns how to model and predict within this level of complexity.

Dr. Bob Bishop

President and Founder of the International Centre for Earth Simulation, Geneva, Switzerland.

food

food/

noun

any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth.

[So, does this mean that non-nutritious substances are not food? And if not, what is it? If it does the opposite of maintaining life and growth, if it impacts our lives negatively, perhaps even to the point of limiting our life expectancy or at least the quality of life we lead, is that food?]

clean

klēn/

adjective

free from dirt, marks, or stains.

[Clean food is free from dirt or toxins, and its ingestion does not generate residues that would make us ill.]

people

/’pēpǝl/

noun

women, men, and children.

[Everybody.]

Introduction

Food and money—a recipe for disaster

Food is something that we need to consume to survive, but also something that can bring us gratification. Beyond the nutritional and biological function of food, there is satisfaction associated with it.

Money is something that most people strive for, sometimes in an unsympathetic way.

Now, in a world where many of those responsible for food production are still led only by the desire to make money, we (the consumers) need to be careful not to put our mouths where the money is.

The same way we choose the cleanest fuel for our cars (when possible), it follows that when deciding what to eat, our choices are based on what best nourishes our bodies. This has not been the case. During the last 10,000 years, with the settling of civilizations, we have increasingly relied on undiversified agricultural practices and extensive animal farming for fueling our bodies. And during the last 70 years, we have seen an exponential growth in our consumption of highly processed foods. This is a split second in our earthly timeline.

The commercial and financial interests behind the majority of packaged-food products available to us have convinced many, through the use of compelling marketing, that these foods are healthy choices. These same advertisements have also led us into thinking that easy, ready-made, or fast meals are inexpensive. These heavily processed food items are neither healthy nor cheap. And the populations with the lowest income end up spending the largest percentage of their money on these harmful and over-processed products that end up costing much more—also in terms of health—in the long run. To make matters worse, the production of these foods does not respect an equal and conscientious use and distribution of our land and resources.

With a total world population of 7.6 billion people, while we have 2 billion people without access to clean water and food, we also have more than 2 billion people either obese or overweight—dying more of obesity related diseases than of underweight. And while we globally spend one trillion dollars in marketing, our total global food wastage is estimated at 1.6 billion tonnes. An accelerated evolution is imperative; why isn’t this happening faster?

We haven’t had complete access to unbiased information. Also, we have had a tendency to associate harm with pleasure or enjoyment, and health with boredom or sacrifice. In reality, we can enjoy healthy eating while healing profoundly and maintaining high levels of energy, radiant skin, stable weight, and impressive fitness levels. And this book explains how.

A Minute of Introspection

Have you ever stopped to think about your relationship with food? Why do you eat what you eat? And, do you eat because you feel physically hungry? Do you eat because you want to fill an emotional void? Or, perhaps just because you feel that you have to? Do you feel pressure to eat certain things? Does guilt factor in? Do you eat differently when in the company of others, possibly those who are the picture of good health? Or, likewise, do you make poor choices when dining with those who don’t care about what they eat—as an attempt to fit in, or rather feeling free to slack (into pre-programmed commercial habits)? Finally, is the pleasure derived from eating the ultimate kind of pleasure and the goal of eating itself? Or, is the fact that we experience satisfaction when eating just a functional trait to ensure our survival? The same way babies are cute so that sleep-deprived parents don’t get rid of them, if eating was not pleasant, or if we didn’t feel physically hungry, would we simply forget to eat?

A Bit of History

Let’s go back in time 1.8 million years; back to Africa, where the earliest humans were found. The environment was tropical, with fresh fruits available all year round, and two distinct seasons—rainy and dry. Each season brought with it different types of fruit and other edible plants. When humans migrated into other regions, areas with more distinct seasons, including winter, their eating habits changed. Our ancestors started to eat to survive, not to have long-term health. Finding whatever they could search for and, if anything, could grow. This geographical migration introduced different types of foods into people’s diets. It also required different methods of food production, like sowing grains, and preservation techniques, like salting or drying foods. Today, the conditions have changed again. Thanks to CO2-compensated flights, greenhouses, and other agricultural and transportation technologies, most of us can have fresh foods all year round. And yet, despite this, many of us continue to eat overly processed and preserved foods every single day.

So, why is this?

We continue eating the same items because habits are hard to break.

In the past, geography determined what people ate. Later on, societal, religious, and cultural traditions passed on by family and community also shaped our diet. Nowadays, much of what we eat as young children is determined by what our parents or caregivers provide. Their choices are often based upon their own childhood eating regimes. As a result, our eating habits are curated by external decisions made based on what’s supposedly best for us. And increasingly, food choices are being dictated by so-called picky-eaters and the busy adults who just want their children to eat.

These influences continue to be powerful today, but two additional forces are playing a huge role—the most pervasive—in affecting the decisions we make (often unconsciously) about what we choose to eat, when, how fast, how often, and how much. These are the unrelenting and intrusive marketing and product planning, and our obsession for convenience.

Imagine a person always being told to consume mostly certain foods and drinks. Countless messages coming from parents, relatives, teachers, text books, toys, television, magazines, billboards, radio, the internet, and all forms of mass communication; constantly bombarding all five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—free samples anyone? Under all these conditions, it’s completely natural that most people just follow certain orders without ever even questioning them. People even want to please and be accommodating by saying I eat ‘everything,’ not realizing that they are compromising their health.

Also, the compounds used in many of these overly processed, preserved, ready-made, off-the-shelf foods are highly addictive. People get constant cravings. The dependence is both mental and physical.

Only when faced with the possibility of death, or after experiencing a life-threatening event, some people react by changing their habits. It’s a response motivated by fear, coming face to face with our mortality. However, too often, as soon as we experience improvement—like weight loss or better mobility and energy—we tend to return to old behaviors. It is as though we forget about the dangerous consequences.

Some people feel that they are invincible, that something can’t possibly happen to them, even when it already has. Many tend to overlook the warning signs (some of them literally written on the side of the packages we pick up). Perhaps, this is because people don’t feel that they have (yet) a clear way to implement the solutions. Medical recommendations like eat healthily or everything in moderation are too vague and commercially inclusive, and restrictive diets are simply not sustainable. People also feel overwhelmed by all the conflicting messages.

As we have—unaware—distanced ourselves from real foods that offer the most health benefits—like fresh fruits and vegetables—we have moved into a world of gluttony, overweight, and malaise. And waiting for us on the other side, triggered by guilt and shame, are a wide selection of eating disorders to choose from, and an endless list of illnesses.

Poor eating habits are responsible for an enormous rise in health problems: cardiovascular diseases, cancerous cell growth, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, psoriasis, cystic acne, infection, inflammation, pain, insomnia, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, asthma, allergies … to name a few. Being sick is not how we are supposed to live; we have an innate desire to feel good; that’s our compass. And while many people want to change what and how they eat and the way they feel, both physically and emotionally, modifying these habits has remained an enormous challenge.

Four main factors lead to the disconnection between what we eat and what our bodies need: (1) inherited customs, (2) the omnipresent marketing of foods, (3) the addictive components in them, and (4) our weakness for convenience. These factors have, together, influenced the food production and the choices we make. We seem to be more careful about where we sit and what we touch with our hands (quickly sanitizing) than we are with what we choose to put into our bodies. We use science and technology to analyze other galaxies (billions of light-years away from us) but overlook our internal interactions with food.

In all this nutritional chaos—including all the noise around remedies—we too often look for a quick solution: pills, detoxes, cleanses, diets, exercise programs, weight loss regimes, and surgeries. All of these quick fixes offer only limited and temporary results. What we need is a profound change of our eating habits for life.

The Power of Choice

A helpful exercise is to project yourself into the future.

How do you want to be—physically and emotionally—in a year from now? Remember that time will pass anyway.

☐ Scenario 1

Path of least resistance - Business as usual - Immediate gratification

I prefer to keep my current habits (and conditions). Reading is over. Where’s the pill?

Or

☐ Scenario 2

Change management - Initial challenge - Permanent reward

I am here for a reason … Consider it done!

So, you have made your decision, and you want to get started. Just beware; it’s easy to say: I will start tomorrow … next week … or next month. Let me just have this fatty lasagna, and why not a slice of chocolate cheesecake? And tomorrow turns into next week, and next week into next month, and, before you know it, an entire year—or a lifetime—passes by.

There is only one way: Make the cut now—you already know how those things taste and how they make you look and feel afterward. This is a must-win battle, and only you can win it.

Clean Food for Clean People™

The Clean Food for Clean People approach gives you the opportunity to progress at your own pace, step-by-step and in an organized way, without abrupt changes to your current way of eating.

First step: make the decision to act—and don’t look back. It takes some time to change habits. Each step is more emotional and mental than it is physical. By sticking to the plan, you will see that, over time, it becomes easier and, in the end, you will never consider going back to your old habits.

This book will be your guide. It aims to bring you to a state of good health (no ailments), where you feel and look your best. And we (you and I) will get you there safely. It is time for all of us to embrace Ahimsa, not only with words but also with action.

Ahimsa, from the Sanskrit, the ancient principle of:

Not harming any being, including ourselves.

This is not a recipe book. You will not need to spend hours in the kitchen. The answer is not in the next secret dish. I share some remarkably easy cooking techniques that help you create meals with intense flavors, ultimately leading you away from processed foods by inspiring your palate.

This is not a diet book either. We have had a tendency to go overboard temporarily on just one variable while we are multivariable beings in a multivariable world. It makes sense that, also for eating, we are not binary in the presence or absence of a single variable, but must take into account a complete array of them.

This is not all or nothing. There are seven phases to move through, at your own pace. Even if all you want to do right now is eat a little bit better, this book will help you get there. The ultimate goal is to rediscover the satisfaction and deliciousness of healthy and real foods that require zero to almost zero preparation time and to make them your go-to foods. To reach this goal, it is essential to understand and go through each of the seven phases. You will come to learn how your nutritional needs get covered without the need of calculations and endless prescriptions. How you eat and the order in which you eat your food will also matter as we take into account our different energy needs throughout