Avoiding The Toxic Food Minefields-Smart Health & Food Safety Tips

By Dina Eliash Robinson

Those of us who are not billionaires and cannot afford individualized, custom-designed Concierge Medicine, nor personal nutritionists and chefs, can still keep ourselves safe, healthy and properly nourished by learning to adapt or correct the one-size-fits-all  healthcare (based on statistical averaging) and profit motivated food information available to most of us, to fit our individual needs.

Believe it or not, it is not only doable and costs not a penny, but it only requires a slight mindset adjustment, a bit of time to find reliable information sources and the decision to pay attention to what goes into and onto our bodies.

The following are a few tips to help you achieve these goals:

• Turn Your Back On Fad Diets… In fact, It’s best to forget the concept of ‘dieting’ altogether and press the Delete button the instant another media-hyped magical body-sculpting, fat-burning or weight-loss formula pops up and clamors for your attention. It is important to remember that as much as we have in common as human beings, each of us is a unique organism carrying within ourselves distinguishing biological, genetic and experiential markers that help us make good choices when we learn to be self-aware.

Our research shows that the only successful shortcut to achieving and maintaining a healthy, high-energy and clear-thinking body and mind consists of

• knowing the current condition, workings and needs of one’s own unique physical and genetic makeup; and

• designing and adopting a well-balanced eating plan with foods and portions compatible with one’s body’s nutrition needs.

To achieve the best results in the shortest possible time, it helps to build eating plans around organic fruits, vegetables, chicken, turkey; and wild-caught small and medium size fish. Courtesy of our awful habit of polluting our oceans, large fish tend to have dangerously high accumulations of toxic mercury, gathered from the smaller fish they eat, which contain very little, if any discernible amounts of this dangerous heavy metal. It is also wise to avoid bottom-feeding fish (such as sword fish), which are contaminated with PCBs, as well as seafood that is farmed or obtained from waters known to be highly polluted or from untrustworthy exporters. 

Since even government health authorities have been recently reporting that red meat poses higher cancer risks than was
previously believed, it is best to eliminate it altogether from our diet. The only red meat that seems to be relatively safe for healthy people with no cardiovascular or high blood pressure problems to eat, on rare occasions and in small quantities, is grass-fed lamb imported from New Zealand.

You’ll find additional general food safety tips to avoid toxins in food we eat and nutritional information scattered throughout this website. We’ll also be happy to answer any questions you might have about the food-and-health connection. Just click on “Contact Us,’ or e-mail me at [email protected].

• Never Self-Medicate… Let your trusted health professional prescribe the supplements (homeopathic, herbal, food-based, etc.) and vitamins when and as you need them.

It is not safe to take either of these substances on your own. So don’t be influenced by the recommendation or example of anyone you know who is taking them; nor by a persuasive marketing pitch, bargain price offer, or even by a “scientific” article in the media about their enticing health benefits.

Needless to say, self-medicating with over the counter pharmaceuticals is far more dangerous, since they are too easy to misuse and can have severe—and sometimes fatal—side effects. In fact, the latter should also be a consideration before agreeing to take prescription drugs. Fortunately, pharmacists and online sources can provide plenty of risk-versus-benefit information on which to base one’s decisions.

Holistic healthcare practitioners base their supplement recommendations on in-person examinations, which often include a muscle-testing method called kinesiology.

Doctors and other allopathic (medical) healthcare practitioners base their prescriptions of medicines on in-person examinations, various test results and on how persuasive they found to be the latest presentations by pharmaceutical representatives who managed to get into the former’s office.   

To get the best of both holistic and allopathic healthcare methods, some patients use their trusted professionals in either or both disciplines, depending on their symptoms or concerns. For example, they ask their primary physician to prescribe blood workups that test not only for the usual medical problems, but also for levels of vitamins, minerals, blood count (anemia), etc. They then bring a printout of the blood test results to their holistic practitioner to determine what supplements might solve the problem(s), before considering prescription or over the counter drugs.

(NOTE: For example, when interior bleeding was caused by the baby aspirin prescribed by a doctor for my then 89 year old mother to lower her slightly elevated blood pressure and prevent a stroke, on the advice of our holistic practitioner, we replaced the aspirin with Kyolic garlic capsules, which not only lowered her blood pressure and protected her from stroke until the end of her life, of natural causes, at age 94, but seemed to also have protected her from viruses and inflammations.)

• Never Self-Diagnose… Consult your trusted health professional as soon as you begin to experience unfamiliar or uncomfortable symptoms. Online research can be misleading and inaccurate—especially when done by a layperson with little or no experience is finding reliable sources of information.

My family, several friends and I found that unless symptoms are serious (in which case physicians should be immediately contacted), it is practical to first consult the holistic professional, since allopathic medicine protocols focus on testing—often invasive or otherwise including some risks—and medications, which, of course, have some or many dangerous side-effects. (Just listen to the fast-talking off-camera voices during drug commercials, describing the scary side effects—sometimes including ‘death’).

If the holistic health professional does not provide the answers and solutions sought during the examination, a trip to the primary physician or a specialist should be the next step.

• One Size Does NOT Fit All… As mentioned above, our bodies are as different from each other as fingerprints. We have various genetic backgrounds, experiential life histories, environments we have lived in or visited, and foods we have consumed—all of which have left some effects on us.

Because therapies and medications are based on statistical averages, with most drug dosages leaning toward the adult male, with little or no differentiation for sizes, weights, females and children, it is best to err on the side of caution. This is also when it is advisable to ask lots of questions and to be a pain in the neck.

The situation regarding supplements and vitamins is thankfully more benign, since on the very rare occasions when some mild discomfort or allergic reaction occurs, it is quickly reversible with no harmful after effects. Homeopathic remedies are the safest, since they are virtually impossible to overdose on, or to cause any harm.