This will be different from what you thought it would be. I’m not piquing your mind’s ability to think, I’m saying this: If you are not properly fed, nourished, your mind, forget your IQ, will not function properly. It cannot.
This will be different from what you thought it would be. I’m not piquing your mind’s ability to think, I’m saying this: If you are not properly fed, nourished, your mind, forget your IQ, will not function properly. It cannot.
Food feeds the mind, as well as the body.
A healthy mind in a healthy body is surely pretty much at the top of the list of goals humans must pursue. Or should.
What do you know about nutrition?
Stiff da’ mouth, swell da’ belly, chomp, wolf, swallow?
Not.
Recently I read an article stating that vitamins could not assure good health. Or something like that.
Well, let me tell you this, a vitamin deficiency can sure ruin your whole day.
The word vitamin means necessary to life. And they are.
A vitamin B deficiency-extended-beyond, can result in pellagra, the four Ds: Dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death. Look around, you’ll see a lot of dermatitis. Bad skin. Who remembers what beautiful skin looked like? What do you know about vitamin B? Probably nothing. Start here. It’s a complex. There are many B vitamins. Unless ordered by a doctor, never take one B. It can mess up the entire complex. So where in the world do you get the entire B?
“The only good source of the B vitamins are liver, yeast, and wheat germ, though meats, seeds, nuts, a few vegetables, and whole grain breads and cereals supply small amounts. Some foods are rich in individual B vitamins.”
How much liver do you eat? Eating liver, today, is pretty risky. Eating liver is sort of an acquired taste — almost forgotten — although it can be really very tasty, I wouldn’t depend on getting it from any cow or chicken, unless you’ve grass-fed them yourself. Even then, I’d wonder. One can only get out of a blade of grass what the soil the grass grows in has. If an animal is grazing on grass that has no B vitamins, their liver has no B vitamins.
A perfectly good example of this are carrots. Carrots, rich in vitamin A, help stave off night blindness. Pilots flying at night were often advised to eat a lot of carrots. Unfortunately, we’re growing carrots today that contain no vitamin A. Our soil is depleted.
Anything grown in the soil can only take from the soil that which is in the soil. No source of vitamin A? No carrot that contains it. If you do suffer from a touch of night blindness, try supplementing one tablet of 10,000 international units of vitamin A and see what happens. You’ll be surprised.
Here’s another one: if you pick an avocado, orange or mango grown on an old tree growing in your backyard, it will have more food value than one you buy in a store that’s been packaged, shipped from who knows where. Another factor, the sooner you eat it, the fresher it is, the more nourishment it contains.
Who am I to wax supreme on nutritious knowledge? The proof of the pudding.
• Bettejo Dux is a Kalaheo resident and the author of “The Scam: A madcap romp through North Shore Kauai.”
