Diet & Fitness 

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Revolutionise your diet

How would you like to wake up every morning raring to go and bursting with energy? A clean diet, rich in natural foods can help, says Max Tomlinson, the UK's leading naturopath and author of Clean Up Your Diet

Cleaning up your diet means thinking about what you put into your body, and the effect it has on you. It applies to the kinds of food you eat, but also - and more importantly - the quality of the food you eat. I'm not just talking about the 'healthier' options in terms of food type, but foods that are richer in nutrients.

I would rather you ate a homemade quarter-pounder containing 100 per cent organic, lean minced beef, fresh organic herbs, and immune-boosting onion (with a free-range, organic egg to bind them together) than a chicken breast from a battery-farmed, non-organic hen, which is likely to be severely nutrient-depleted.

Seven steps to a clean diet

1. Go organic

Commercial farming methods use an array of chemicals to protect crops and promote growth in plants and animals. Some of these manmade chemicals are now thought to cause disease (including some cancers) as well as hyperactivity in children, asthma, eczema and a host of other illnesses.

Others upset our hormonal balance, leading to problems such as infertility or mood swings. Organic farmers avoid using toxic chemical sprays on their crops, their animals are kept in more natural, free-range conditions and are fed on natural foods. In addition, organic meat does not come from animals that have been 'beefed up' using chemical hormones or antibiotics.

2. Go seasonal

The concept of eating what is in season disappeared with the advent of modern food supply and transport, but eating with the seasons is a fundamental naturopathic philosophy and is important because the body needs and craves certain foods depending on the time of year.

On the whole, seasonal foods have travelled shorter distances to reach your table and so have suffered less nutrient loss than those that are out of season. You will also find your foods at their tastiest as well as their most affordable.

3. Make it fresh

There is no question, fresh is best. Some important vitamins (including vitamins A and C) degrade over time as a result of exposure to light, heat and oxygen. Apply this attitude on freshness to all your fruit and vegetables and your nutrient intake will soar.

4. Aim for minimally processed and lightly cooked or raw

Most commercial food processing methods involve using heat to cook the food and to destroy any resident bacteria, thus prolonging shelf-life.

This process destroys or damages some important vitamins and other nutrients that are very sensitive to heat. Food processing in the home can also damage nutrients. Correct cooking methods, such as lightly steaming rather than boiling, or eating foods raw, minimise this damage.

5. Make food additive-free

More than 12,000 manmade chemicals are added to our foods. In isolation, on rare occasions and in tiny quantities, I'm sure that most of them are fairly benign. What does worry me, though, is that food manufacturers and processors combine any number of chemicals to colour, flavour, enhance and preserve our food.

There has been no conclusive research on the effects on our health for the combination of these chemicals - the so-called 'cocktail effect' - and when there has been research it tends to have been by the food or additive manufacturers themselves rather than by independent bodies.

From a commonsense, 'chemistry' point of view, chemicals act in synergy, work together and create by-products, some of which could be potentially harmful.

6. Eat the whole grain

Wheat, rye, oats, rice and barley are some of the mainstays of the modern diet. In their wholegrain, natural form, these cereals are a fantastic and very nutritious. However, modern milling techniques, and the huge worldwide demand for refined, white-flour products, has seen a drastic decline in the nutrient levels in our breads, pastas and other cereal-based foods.

The sugars in refined grains release quickly into the blood stream, contributing to disorders such as diabetes and weight gain. Healthy brown rice, wholemeal pasta, wholemeal brown bread and wholemeal flour are all part of the clean, pure-foods diet.

7. Eat sustainable fish

The clean diet should be healthy for the environment as well as for your body. Over-fishing is now seen by marine scientists as the single greatest threat to marine wildlife and our oceans. Many fish stocks are in a state of serious decline, with some common stocks on the verge of collapse.

The Marine Conservation Society UK has put together a list of the fish from all over the world that appear to be in immediate danger. They include Atlantic cod and Atlantic salmon, as well as snapper, swordfish and tuna (unless it's skipjack tuna, and caught using a pole and line rather than nets).

Try to buy fish that is caught at sustainable levels such as Pacific, or organically farmed, salmon; flounder; Dover and lemon sole; and Pacific cod.

Clean Up Your Diet by Max Tomlinson, (£12.99 Duncan Baird Publishers) www.dbp.co.uk/cleanupyourdiet

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