The key to gaining the maximum nutrition from what you eat lies learning to prepare food from scratch yourself. There is no substitute. Otherwise you will find yourself prey to the “value-added” food industry, who will try to sell you ready-made dishes on the grounds that you are far too busy to cook for yourself. Ready made food, however many added vitamins and minerals it contains, will never delivery the nutritional punch of freshly prepared food weight for weight.

What you eat is the most important thing you can do for your overall health. We all have time to maximise the quality of our health and that of our families. Learning to cook is not difficult, you don’t have to be a cordon bleu, just preparing at least one meal a day from fresh raw organic ingredients will make all the difference.

Try to include raw food or fresh juices in your diet every day – that way you gain maximum goodness from the organic produce you buy. Below are listed the key cooking and preparation techniques to make sure you do not destroy the nutrients in your precious food.

Staying a reasonable weight depends on keeping the calories you eat in balance with the calories you use up: ie food and exercise. For some this is simple, for the vast majority, particularly of women who have to contend with hormone fluctuations, pregnancy and breast-feeding, it is harder.

But if you make sure you eat at least five helpings a day of organic vegetables and fruit, you can’t go far wrong – you should be too full to stray into temptation!

Whatever kind of protein you choose, put vegetables at the centre of your diet. Many scientific studies have shown conclusively that eating fruit and vegetables protects against all the major degenerative diseases. Together with grains – bread, barley, rice, quinoa, millet, kasha etc – vegetables should comprise around 60% of the bulk of your diet.

Fibre
Fibre is a vital part of the diet – although we do not absorb cellulose unlike grazing animals such as cows and rabbits, it has a vital function in the action of our intestines. Without fibre our digestions would pack up completely, because it is fibre that stimulates the gut to push the food along. Fibre increases beneficial microbial growth, inhibits disease-causing bacteria and dilutes poisonous wastes in the bowel. Only plant foods contain fibre, and this is another reason to include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, cereals, bran, porridge, whole vegetables etc in the diet.
Again, the key is variety as there are several different kinds of fibre in plants – cellulose gums, pectin, lignin and cellulose - each offering health benefits of a particular kind. Gums, pectins and lignin lower cholesterol. Cellulose is best for blood sugar control, and bulking out the contents of the gut, but only gums, pectins and lignin have been demonstrated to help prevent cancer. Best sources of fibre are all kinds of beans, whole grains, bran and porridge, blackberries, fruit with its skin, prunes and other dried fruits, baked potatoes in their skins, broccoli and ispaghula husk – a miraculous Indian grass seeds that turns to a gel inside you and quickly controls both constipation and diarrhoea.

Fats
Essential fatty acids linoleic acid (Omega-6) and linolenic acid (Omega-3) are vital for good health. They are the building blocks of the nervous system and cell membranes; they help produce prostaglandins, a hormone-like substance found in virtually all body tissues; they provide energy; and prevent heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. If you don’t absorb enough, you will be in danger of chronic degenerative diseases. they are found in oily fish like tuna, salmon (or fish oil capsules), or in linseed, hemp seeds, sunflower seeds, or walnut oils. Other, non-animals sources besides linseeds are soy, kidney or haricot beans.

Stick to cold-pressed, minimally processed, organic oils. It is commercial processing that damages them and you. ESFs are destroyed by processing and refining, which uses heat and light, causing a chemical reaction. Healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids are transformed into dangerous ones by processing.

Avoid all kinds of margarine, or anything contains transfatty acids, such as hydrogenated vegetable oils which are found in all kinds of commercially produces bakery products and many other processed foods. Get really used to reading labels on anything you buy with a sceptical eye.

Hydrogenated fats are hard, man-made fats that stay solid and stable at room temperature, produced from vegetable oils by injecting hydrogen, so that they can be used more conveniently in baking and food processing. Most margarines also contain them.

In 1994, Harvard researcher Walter Willett published his findings on the dangers of transfatty acid consumption. By questioning 67,000 nurses he proved that that hydrogenated fat as a regular feature in the diet, more than doubled risk of heart disease and cancer. These fats have been implicated in low birth weights, decreased testosterone, increased abnormal sperm and interfering with insulin production. When Willett’s findings were published, Flora removed the hydrogenated fats from their Sunflower margarine – although much of the rest of the industry remained largely indifferent.

Because the body is deceived into welcoming them as natural fats, they block the fat receptors in the cells which prevents absorption of the vital Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids. This became obvious in the US, where the average US citizen consumes about 2-3 times the daily requirement for essential fatty acids and still suffers from deficiencies, because their diet also includes large amounts of the hydrogenated fats.

As Udo Erasmus, author of Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, says, “If you see the h-word on the label, get the H out of there.”

It would be better to include small amounts of organic butter and cold pressed organic oils in the diet. Adding fats for flavour after cooking is a good way of reducing the amount, as is investing in an oil spray for coating pans and salads. Extra virgin olive oil is particularly recommended, because it is monounsaturated and doesn't get damaged as polyunsaturated oils do in the cooking process, creating free radicals, which can damage cells. Extra virgin olive oil is powerfully beneficial stuff - recent research has found that , if applied after sunbathing, it minimises sun damage to the skin.

Bacteria for health
“Good” bacteria have had a lots of press recently with little bottles of sweet milk products hitting the headlines. You can get the same effect without the sugar, and at much lower cost, by eating plenty of live organic yoghurt or organic soy dairy alternatives such as Yofu; and traditional Japanese fermented soy products such as miso (a delicious flavouring for soups and stocks) or tempeh (very much an acquired taste if you aren’t Japanese), which contain Aspergilus oryzae, another form of friendly bacteria.

Variety
Trying to do the same thing every day bores most people. Variety is the key – our modern table in the West is abundant, you should be able to ring the changes daily. The range of organic food available grows all the time – although not always in desirable ways, unfortunately there is a growing trend for organic convenience foods. The food processing industry has discovered the organic ingredient, and is diminishing its nutritional value in just the same way that it did with conventional food.
According the experts, allergies are more like to take hold if your diet is limited. Vary what you choose to eat as much as possible.

Vegetarian or not?
What you choose to eat can depend on many variables – no one diet is best for everyone. American cancer researcher Nicholas Gonzalez believes there are 10 different nutrition profiles in the human population – and that these determine whether we feel the need to eat meat or not. This can also be identified by blood type.

Cultural heritage is also a good pattern to follow – historically, the British diet consisted of the best possible ingredients very simply cooked. As we look further back in time, we can see elaborate salads, and dishes of whole grains alongside the traditional roast meat and poultry. Many outside factors have influenced the diet of these islands, due to our extensive Empire. So culturally, it is appropriate for us to taste the dishes of the world.

Eating Fresh Food
The main factor is freshness – try to go for seasonal produce. It is so much more of a treat to eat an English strawberry in June than and hard and tasteless imported one in February. Organic vegetable box schemes are the easiest way to stay in touch with the seasons – as seasonal selections are picked and packed each week. Look for a local one if possible – some of these do not operate during the Hungry Gap of April and May.

The old organic image of gnarled and earthy roots has been banished by the likes of organic pioneer Thoby Young – whose idea it was to fill the gaps in local provision with a nationwide delivery service for seasonal boxes of organic produce.

His company the Fresh Food Co sells at least 60% UK grown produce during the year. This is grown by a co-operative of large and small farmers in East Anglia, packed soon after picking and despatched to homes nationwide overnight. That way the freshness of the produce is not compromised. Several other nationwide delivery services were set up in imitation, but Thoby Young was the first person to make organic produce easily available to households nationwide.

The boxes of mixed seasonal vegetables proved popular, particularly with people who didn’t want their lives to be too predictable. It was fun to open the box, find an interesting selection of everyday produce such as onions and carrots and treats such as mixed salad leaves and asparagus.

Each box comes with new seasonal recipes, and information about the vegetables inside. For reluctant veggie eaters, the fact that they have chosen to have a good quantity of organic produce delivered every week persuades them to put the vegetables at the centre of their diets where they belong.

It is easy now to replace every ingredient in your cupboard with an organic equivalent. It becomes reassuring when you know the facts to cook organic from scratch, thereby not compromising any aspect of the produce you have purchased.

Organic storage tips
When handling organic food, it is worth remembering that it is sometimes more fragile than conventional food, because organic standards mean that it cannot be chemically treated after harvest. For instance, conventional citrus fruits are coated with silicon wax to increase their shelf life – if you zest a conventional lemon for instance, you end up with silicon in your recipe. Conventional potatoes and onions etc are treated to prevent them sprouting in the spring. Organic vegetables are a little uncontrolled in this way, and should be put away in the dark and used quickly.

Store everything in the fridge, or in a dark cool place. Special plastic bags doped with a kind of Japanese powdered stone have been found to increase the life of vegetables in the fridge by absorbing the ethylene gas given off by ripening produce.

The main principle is to eat your fruit and vegetables while they are still fresh, and you are much more likely to get fresh produce from a box scheme or home delivery service – where the food comes straight to you and is never on display, than from a supermarket shelf.