Forgotten Foods :
Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System

By Alvin Last - Retired Club Director

There are sometimes forgotten foods, which are good sources for many nutrients. Sources that Ehret teaches is that mucus forming foods such as the starches are not listed.

These are nutritional values for raw foods.. Ehret did allow cooking but to keep this within limits cooked nutritional sources will come another time. Also not every good raw source is listed for space reasons. Some things that we do not expect to have nutritional value such as horseradish are listed. Can't eat too much of it.

Also this chart shows things such as water chestnuts, kale and collards that are nutritional and by adding some of these not to common items, we can get more variety. Dandelion is interesting as it can be cooked, eaten as a salad and I am told, makes an excellent tonic wine. To use some of these vegetables, finely cut and dice them when making a salad.

Attention: Coffee drinkers think about tea.

Tea is a plant food and is full of phytochemicals (phyto means plant) a group of molecules that can act as antioxidants. Tea also has compounds called catechins, which apparently help lower cholesterol. A study at Tufts University in Boston found that volunteers blood lipids decreased over only three weeks of tea drinking, Total cholesterol was decrease by 6%. And low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the bad ones, was lowered by up to 10%.

From the journal "Circulation", if you drank two or more cups a day you had a 44 percent lower death rate following a heart attack.

From the "Archives of Internal Medicine", if you drank tea consistently for six to ten or more years, you had greater bone mineral density.

There are four basic types of tea.

Vitamin Supplements?

There has always been a question in my mind about whether vitamin supplements were as helpful as getting vitamins from foods such as leafy green vegetables, nuts and other foods rich in anti-oxidants such as Vitamin E.  Two studies suggested that these anti-oxidants might reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.  Other studies have shown that anti-oxidants may have a positive effect on dementia, a loss or serious impairment of mental powers.

These latest studies suggest that vitamin rich foods - but not vitamin supplements have beneficial effects.

The reasoning behind the anti-oxidant vitamins effects has been shown to be their ability to block the effects of oxygen molecules called free radicals which can damage cells and are thought to contribute to cancer and heart disease.  Studies showed that both vitamin E and vitamin C work as anti-oxidants with vitamin E showing more benefits than vitamin C. There are studies that find food anti-oxidants better than vitamin supplements and there are studies done only with vitamin supplements.  This makes it difficult to compare these studies.  Also these studies did not address other important anti-oxidants such as selenium.

My question now is; are food anti-oxidants or supplement anti­oxidants better? To play it safe, until more contradictory studies are published, use both with the emphasis on food anti-oxidants.

There is a much-overlooked sweet fruit that by itself can make a great dessert.  If has a big seed, It originally come from Asia where it was grown for more than 4,000 years.  Today most of the ones available in the United States and Canada come from Mexico.  It can also be used in fruit and green leaf salads, salsas and blended with about anything you can think of including spices.  You guessed it.  The mango.

What About Calcium Supplements and Vitamin D?

There are at least 11 different calcium salts. Calcium carbonate and calcium citrate are the most common in the United States. Whatever salt you take the efficiency is pretty much the same. Calcium citrate although being more expensive for the calcium received, unlike calcium carbonate, calcium citrate does not have to be taken with a full meal, just some food. Calcium is better absorbed when taken with vitamin D.

However sun light, as Ehret said, is good for you. He may not have known about Vitamin D being produced in the skin. I must add but just a little, as our ozone layer is not what it was in Ehret’s time.

What Else About Vitamin D? Ehret’s VITAMIN

Vitamin D appears to prevent falls by binding a vitamin D metabolite to certain receptors in muscle tissue, leading to improved muscle function and reduced risk of falling. There were no vitamin D supplements in Ehret’s time but there was sunlight.

What about Fats?

Ehret would not agree with all these chart recommendation as being mucusless. It is just to give a comparison of different fats and fat sources.

Summary of Fat Information

Source: Fats and Cholesterol Nutrition Source, Harvard School of Public Health, www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats.html

A small study has shown that drinking tomato juice for three weeks may help prevent heart complications in patients with type 2 diabetes. In a research letter reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers said that the juice reduced the blood's ability to clot.

Studies had shown that tomato products have lowered the occurrence of various heart ailments, so the researchers decided to test their theory. While maintaining a normal diet, the participants were randomly assigned to drink about eight ounces of tomato juice or a tomato-flavored beverage daily for three weeks.

At the beginning and end of the study blood samples were analyzed. The results showed that platelet aggregation was significantly lower at the end of the trial for those drinking tomato juice. This study further verifies those tomatoes, an acid forming fruit, recommended by Ehret over one hundred years ago should be part of a mucusless diet.

It is important to stress that Ehret understood that a mucus lean program was important to allow people to work toward a mucusless life. We need to know from Ehret - the difference between mucus forming, mucus lean and mucusless foods. Many of us are mucusless but many are mucus lean and need to let their bodies tell them how to raise themselves to mucusless. Transition is, as Ehret wrote, the key for many of us.

Mucusless Diet Healing System. Mucusless Diet Healing System

Contemporary Insights to Professor Ehret was written as an introduction to to the 75th anniversary edition of Professor Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System. Mucusless Diet Healing System is available from Ehret Literature Publishing for $4.95 (US) online.Click here to purchase the 75th anniversary edition of Professor Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System.