My 20 Favorite Foods

If somebody asked you to choose your 20 favorite foods, what would they be? What if you were told that they would be the only foods you could eat for the rest of your life? Here are the 20 foods I would have to have.

1. Apples: Great source of fiber. Helps prevent cholesterol buildup and reduces possibility of arteriosclerosis and heart disease. Packed with potassium and low in calories. And Benjamin Franklin said, “Eat an apple a day....”

2. Spinach: Loads of Vitamin K, A and C. Packed with manganese, folate, iron, calcium and potassium. Research shows that spinach helps in the prevention of osteoporosis, heart disease, colon cancer, and arthritis.

3. Celery: Rich in vitamin C. It is one of my favorite foods because I like the crunchy texture added to my spinach salad.

4. Brown Rice: Great source of fiber. Good source of manganese, selenium and magnesium, iron, Vitamin B1, B3, and B6. Research has shown that the oil in brown rice helps lower cholesterol. Don’t eat white rice. The process of milling and polishing destroys most of the natural nutrients.

5. Lemons/Limes: I start out each morning by chugging a glass of lemon or lime water. I squeeze them fresh every morning. Rich source of minerals and vitamins, especially vitamin C. Even though lemons and limes are acidic, they actually have an alkaline effect on the body.

6. Broccoli: Great source of calcium, iron and magnesium and is low-calorie, low-fat, low-sodium, and high in fiber. Good source of vitamin A and C. More Vitamin C than oranges. Contains some 3% of protein.

7. Asparagus: Excellent source of protein, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Pantothenate Acid, Magnesium, Zinc and Selenium, and a great source of fiber. Contains vitamin A, C, E, and K.

8. Avocados: Low in cholesterol and Sodium. Good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Vitamin K and folate. Blocks bad LDL cholesterol.

9. Almonds: Good source of protein. Low in saturated fat and contain calcium and magnesium for strong bones. Also contain vitamin E and phytochemicals, which may help protect against cardiovascular disease and cancer.

10. Romaine Lettuce: Excellent source of vitamin A, K, C, manganese, and chromium. Also a good source of vitamin B and potassium.

11. Cabbage: Rich in vitamin C, fiber, folic acid, and potassium. Cabbage has antioxidant power that helps clear up toxins. It was revered in ancient Rome as a cancer cure.

12. Carrots: Great source of antioxidant compounds. They are the richest vegetable source of the pro-vitamin A carotenes. Help protect against cardiovascular disease and cancer. Also known to promote good vision.

13. Red Grapes: Contain beneficial compounds called flavonoids, which are phytonutrients that give the vibrant purple color to grapes. Considered a powerful antioxidant. Prevents the accumulation of harmful oxidized cholesterol.

14. Sweet Potatoes: Excellent source of vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene). Also a good source of vitamin C, manganese, copper, fiber, vitamin B6, potassium and iron.

15. Quinoa: Contains twice the protein of other grains with fewer carbohydrates. A complete protein that has all the essential amino acids your body needs to build muscle.

16. Beans: If I could only pick one it would be the black bean because it is the most nutritious. Good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber. Combined with brown rice, black beans provide fat-free high quality protein.

17. Flax Seed: Rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an essential fatty acid that helps prevent heart disease.

18. Blueberries: Strong antioxidant power. Its phytonutrients fight cancer, heart disease and age-related memory loss.

19. Tomatoes: Contains lycopene and phytochemicals that protect against heart attack, cancers and macular degeneration.

20. Tofu: A complete source of protein. One of the only food products that provide all eight essential amino acids. It contains no animal fats or cholesterol. Tofu is low on sodium, contains few calories, and is easy to digest. Excellent source of iron and Vitamin B. Also a source of calcium. I like it on my spinach salad.

A Yodel for Peace and Our Common Humanity

You know the second thing I remember thinking when the news got out about the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse in Iraq? I thought about Dr. Magnus Bucher. He was my Western Civilization teacher at the University of Maryland, Munich Campus in 1970. He was a fascinating man. I will never forget him.

I remember when I was signing up for classes one day another student told me to make sure I take Dr. Magnus Bucher's class. I said, "Why?" "Because he is a great teacher and he yodels." "Yodels?", I said. "Yes, he is one of the world's great yodelers, and if you ask him during class he will usually give you a yodeling demonstration." "Thanks", I said, "I will sign up now."

I was lucky. I did get into his class. And I did get the privilege to hear one of the world's great yodelers entertain our class. But more than that, I was privileged to learn from one of the most remarkable teachers I had ever had.

He not only taught us from the Western Civilization book, but he also taught us from his life. He taught us things that you would never find in a text book. He told us about when he was a young man that his family feared Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. His mom and dad were afraid their teenage son would be kidnapped by a military regime they hated.

This was a new insight for me. It wasn't until Dr. Bucher spoke that I realized there were many people in Germany that did not believe in Hitler's philosophy. I wrongly assumed that all of Germany went off the deep end.

He told us a story of how his family wanted to hide him so that he would not be drafted by the Nazi army. But it was to no avail. They got him. And then Magnus Bucher's indoctrination into Hitler's warped world began.

The Nazi's told him that the Americans were monsters and that he should be very afraid if he were ever captured. Well as history would have it, young Magnus Bucher did get captured by the American army. He trembled with fear about what might happen to him. And then, for him, the most amazing awareness moment occurred. The Americans were not monsters after all.

The soldiers that captured him acted with compassion toward their prisoners. He was not abused or tortured. Instead he was offered gum and cigarettes in a way a friend might offer a friend. Magnus looked into the eyes of his captors and shared a moment of common humanity.

I remember sitting in a class with an overwhelming sense of pride. I remember the good feeling I had. The spine-tingling-vibrations and goose bumps. My teacher had experienced a time when the Americans were the “good guys”.

A few kind gestures from an American GI to a young and frightened German soldier would speak volumes for the United States of America. Little did the American soldiers know that their acts of kindness would lead this prisoner down the road to American citizenship. They represented a great America by treating a fellow human being with respect. Things have changed since that day in WWII.

I can’t imagine what kind of man Magnus Bucher would have turned out to be if he had been stripped naked by his captors while attack dogs were set on him. Which brings me back to the first thing I thought about the day I heard about the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse: how could American soldiers totally blow it? How could Americans become the hostile monsters that Hitler told his young recruits in WWII to fear?

At Abu Ghraib an awareness of common humanity was lost and replaced by barbaric arrogance. How does it happen? It happens when there is a lack of respect for other cultures....for other belief systems. It’s happens when ignorant human beings feel supremely powerful.

For me, I still focus on the America Dr. Bucher talked about in class. He told us inspiring stories. He told us how he escaped and how eventually made Olympic ski teams for Germany and the United States. He told us how much he respected America's values. How he moved to America and became a citizen. And now, here he was teaching American students in Munich, Germany. And, of course, along the way he became one of the world’s renowned yodelers.

No More Hay Fever Blues

Have you ever had hay fever? I mean really bad hay fever? Eyes stinging, watering, and itching while sneezing uncontrollably? I have. And I was miserable.

I remember it being the worst when I was at the University of Missouri in 1973. My hay fever was so intense that it would evolve into a serious case of bronchitis. When I did see doctors they would prescribe pills that would only dull the hay fever symptoms. And then I didn’t feel great. I felt numb and barely functioning.

I never went to a doctor that could tell me why I had hay fever and how I could make it stop. It was always take this pill. It will help you. So I went on with my life thinking that hay fever was going to be my evil partner on this planet journey.

It was sometime in 1983 that I came across some books by George Osawa and Michio Kushi. I have always been interested in health books, so I became very intrigued by the eastern approach to nutrition. I came across a paragraph in one of Mr. Kushi’s books that changed my life forever. I wish I still had the book so I could quote it for you verbatim.

Anyway, the words I read blew my mind. It said something like this: hay fever is not caused by pollen floating through the air. If pollen caused hay fever, then everyone would have hay fever. If you have hay fever, you have a digestion problem. If you want to cure your hay fever then quit eating foods that are hard for you to digest.

I am thinking to myself, “What!? No doctor ever mentioned digestion to me! Could this be true?” The book went on to say that pollen is a protein and is absorbed into the body as we breathe. Then our body tries to digest the extra protein.

In my case, if I ate hard-to-digest red meat or dairy during hay fever season, then my body could not handle the overload. But the body is smart, it goes into overdrive to get rid of the excess and uses the eyes, nose, and skin to help in the process. So, somebody like me ends up with a running nose, watery and itchy eyes. Some people also break out in skin rashes.

By this time in my reading I am overcome with joy and excitement. It’s like I found a secret treasure. I was pumped! I kept reading the paragraph over and over and saying to myself “Could this be right, could changing what I eat work for me?”

Well it was time to find out. I changed my diet. I started looking at the foods that were hard to digest and eliminated them from my diet during hay fever season. And, guess what, my hay fever went away. Gone. It has never come back. This was a major event in my life because I suffered miserably for years.

I could not get over the fact that the answer to my hay fever was in the foods that I was eating. I could not get over the fact that no doctor made any mention of my diet. It was always, “Take this pill”.

I need to remind you that this is what happened to me. I know that there are people out there with stomachs like steel that can eat anything they want without any hay fever problems. I am only sharing what happened to me.

Overtime I began to realize that the my biggest food problems were red meat and dairy. I had already stopped drinking milk, now it was the cheese and red meat that I had to stop eating to get healthy. I remember that when I was young and drank milk and ate cheese everyday that I also suffered from severe gastric distress. I would double over, fall on the floor and lay on my stomach for hours. It got to be a routine my family just got used to. “Don’t step on your brother, he’s laying on the floor moaning again!”

Another thing that I learned from Michio Kushi and George Osawa was the importance of chewing your food thoroughly. Seems like one of the those wisdom statements mom always used to make. “Slow down and chew your food.” But, not me, I was always in a hurry. Since I was miserable with hayfever, it was time for me to try anything to make it go away. So I did. I slowed downed, started eating the right foods and remembered to chew.

After curing my hay fever I began to wonder what else doctor’s were not telling me. I started to think more about what did they do in the old days....before all the pills? I started to question everything I was told that was true. But that’s another story.

No Milk for Mr. Stutzer

Since this is my first prescription to myself, a reminder to do what is good for my body, I thought I would start when I first began to question the nutritional beliefs that were passed down to me as the truth. The seed to this awareness was planted in 1970. I was in Mr. Stutzer's Zoology class at the University of Maryland, Munich Campus.

The subject of milk came up during a class discussion and Mr. Stutzer told the class that the human being (mainly caucasians) have the mistaken notion that you must drink cow's milk to get the calcium you need. He said, "There is no scientific evidence that children need cow's milk to build strong bones." Upon making this statement, a woman about my mother's age from the back of the room screamed something like, "You got to be out of your mind telling these young college kids that milk is not good for them!"

I don't recall the exact words, I just remember how upset she was...and nothing compared to how upset she was going to be after Mr. Stutzer finished relaying his point-of-view. In response to her remarks he went on to say that it would actually be better for you to drink a glass of wine than to drink cow's milk. That's when the woman in the back of the room totally lost it. And, of course, with the mention of wine the class started cheering. She was angry and told us how she had raised three healthy children on cow's milk.

She didn't much care for what Mr. Stutzer believed. She knew she was right because she would never do anything to harm her children. And if it was true that milk was not important for building strong bones, then her family doctor would have told her so.

Mr. Stutzer just smiled and went on to tell the class that no other species drinks milk beyond infancy. And then he laughed when he said no other species drinks the milk of another species. Only the human being drinks the milk of another species. Mr. Stutzer said nature planned it differently: human's milk for human infants, cow's milk for calves, cat's milk for kittens, dog's milk for puppies, and so on. And then after the mammal infant is weaned, no more milk. It is no longer needed as a nutrient.

He pointed out that most of the world does not drink milk and that most of the world does not experience the high rates of osteoporosis that Americans do. I can't remember all the words that were spoken that day, but I recall him smiling and reminding her that his viewpoints were based on science.

He told us that cow's milk is suited to the nutritional needs of calves, not human beings. Cows have 4 stomachs and gain hundreds of pounds within a couple of months. Some cows weigh 2,000 pounds by their second birthday. Milk from a cow contains 3 times as much protein as human milk and scientific studies have shown that too much protein can cause the body to excrete calcium rather than absorb it. The high protein content of cow's milk leads to a gradual decrease in bone density and contributes to the development of osteoporosis.

Well its been 38 years since I sat in that class, but a seed was planted that day that continues to germinate in my brain. It still has me questioning what we were taught about nutrition in school. I didn't quit drinking milk that day, but I finally did quit it altogether 25 years ago. And then it took me until this year to completely stop eating all dairy products.

I am not a doctor, so I would never tell anyone else what to do when it comes to eating and drinking. I am just doing research to find out what is best for me. Because of my own studies, I do believe that to build strong bones it is better to eat non-animal sources of calcium instead: dark green vegetables, tofu, nuts, seeds and calcium fortified products such as rice milk, soy milk and orange juice.

It took me forever to figure out that dairy products aren't good for me. They might be OK for other people, but they wreak havoc on my body. I used to have heart burn, hay fever and severe gastric distress. Not anymore, it's all gone. My whole body feels better.

I often wonder about Mr. Stutzer and what he would think about the celebrity "milk moustache" ads that boldly proclaim the benefits of cow's milk. He'd probably say it is as it has always been: it's about the money. The dairy industry has a powerful hold on the business of nutrition. They pay big bucks to dieticians, doctors, celebrities and researchers to push dairy. It's about profit, not health.