The Art of Cuisine

Foods & Tips to Lengthen Your Life

Nuts

Sprinkle two ounces on your cereal or salad each day to reduce your LDL ("bad") cholesterol by 14 percent.

Fruits and Vegetables

Eat five, 3/4 cup servings daily to lower your blood pressure, slash your risk of cancer, and lower your heart disease risk by 21 percent.

Fish

Have three servings every week (good choices include baked trout or broiled wild salmon). Women of childbearing age and young children should stick to two servings a week and avoid large predatory fish, such as swordfish, albacore tuna, and shark. You'll cut your risk of heart disease and stroke by 14 percent.

Dark Chocolate

Savor two ounces with a minimum of 60 percent cocoa content each day, and your risk of cardiovascular disease dips 11 percent.

Garlic

Add just one clove (cooked or raw) daily to pasta, salad, or a stir-fry to drop your LDL cholesterol. This can lower your risk of heart disease and stroke by 38 percent.

Wine

Sip a five-ounce glass each evening to cut your risk of heart disease by 32 percent.

Drastically Reducing Calories May Lengthen Your Life

I ran into something interesting an article from on the NatualNews.com website by Deanna Dean from www.CalorieRestriction.org that had some great information for you to think about. I do believe eating less will help you to have less health problems that are cause from being overweight. In addition, to this lowering your calorie intake, if you start cutting back on sugars and white flours help as well. Don’t over indulge in eating too much meat either, because that has been proven to do more harm than good.  My book called 8 Easy Steps to Create the Body You’ve Always Wanted  goes over foods that burn calories, foods that help you from aging, foods that can reduce wrinkles. I am not too familiar with the CR diet but from what I can see, it reminds me of the Mediterranean Diet or the Omega Diet. There are so many diets out there that we get bombarded by and to be honest cutting your calorie intake and your sugars, your white starches,  increase your omega 3’s, and fruits and veggies. In addition, eating your proteins first thing in the morning or at a meal will help you lose weight and get proper exercise. That is why I like my protein shake because I am in a rush some morning and I just quickly in a shaker container mix my Isagenix shake and I am full until lunchtime.  This works perfect for me being a busy single mom that is on the go all the time.

There is a growing body of believers, especially longevity-seeking Baby Boomers, who believe that by drastically limiting the amount of food they consume, they will slow the aging process and extend their life. It's a radical, controversial premise; the less you eat, the longer you'll live. I am not sure you should go to this extreme because I believe too much of anything and too little of anything can be harmful in the end.

CR, calorie restriction, doesn't mean deprivation or starvation, but it does require eating fewer calories than the body is accustomed to receiving and it flies in the face of conventional recommended daily calorie intake guidelines. That is why I think doing the Isagenix shake is even healthier because of the reduce calorie and all the notorious and vitamins in the shakes. The best thing is you don’t feel hungry. Trying to lower your calorie count should be a gradual change too. You will be in pain going from one extreme to another. I think each day make a change. This is for overall health not just weight loss.  You can maintain your perfect weight and have less health problems down the road. You will not need to buy prescriptions because you will not need them. Just think of all the money you will save by just cutting back on what you eat. Your food cost will be a twenty or thirty percent less and you will not have doctor bills and high prescription costs.

Typical diets focus on weight loss, but CR is a different kind of diet that reduces long-term calorie intake and promotes the consumption of nutrient dense foods. This pursuit holds the elusive promise of lengthening the human life span, and even -- as some submit -- immortality. I believe portion control besides cutting back on all the sugars would help most people reduce weight fairly quickly. Of course, you need to exercise and drink plenty of water.

There are many compelling arguments to support the longevity issue, but advocates believe that at the very least, following CR precepts will enhance your health right now by minimizing body fat, inhibiting cell mutation, lowering blood glucose levels, decreasing inflammation, activating brain-alertness, promoting deep restful sleep, increasing energy levels and creating a more youthful biological age. I know with drinking a protein shakes and eating one to two lower calorie meals a day.

Recent studies from the National Institute on Aging, Harvard University, and Washington University concur and say that a calorie-restricted diet includes many benefits, one of them being extending human life. Lab studies dating back to the thirties show that mice and all sorts of laboratory critters, when placed on a severely restricted diet, lived fifty percent longer than the oldest members of their peer community.

Biosphere 2 seemed like a study out of a science fiction novel; nevertheless, it proved an unintended point. In 1991 in the Arizona desert, eight scientists sealed themselves inside an airtight terrarium to prove they could live isolated for two years in a self-sustained ecosystem. Something went terribly wrong and they realized they couldn't grow enough food for them to survive the two years. Without Roy Walford, a UCLA pathologist and team physician, the entire team would have starved to death, but fortuitously he had been studying calorie restriction for decades and was able to parse their meager food supply thereby drastically cutting their calories for the duration of the experiment. You would think when they emerged from their habitat they would be gaunt, pasty and in need of medical help; quite the opposite. They were healthier in almost every respect than when they had sealed themselves in two years prior. Dr. Walford later wrote a book, Beyond the 120-Year Diet: How to Double Your Vital Years.

While there is no specified meal plan with CR, the recommendation is to eat twenty to thirty percent less than accepted conventional recommendations for healthy calorie intake. Sugar, saturated fats, and most dairy products are shunned. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are the mainstay foods, which make up the bulk of the diet, but savvy people already know that these particular foods are the ones hallowed as the basis of a healthy diet anyway.

Be forewarned though lest you rush to throw everything out in your refrigerator. It has been shown that without an accompanying healthy lifestyle, including exercise in particular, strict calorie restriction can lead to loss of bone density. A one year study of 46 participants at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, conducted by Dennis T. Villareal M.D. revealed that individuals in the CR group not only lost weight, but also lost an average of 2.2% of their bone density in the lower spine, 2.2% at the hip and 2.1% at the top of the femur, all high risk areas for fracture. An article in the Archives of Internal Medicine - JAMA, states that without exercise, restricting calories may lead to bone density loss.

This would seem to be the green light; if we exercise and restrict calories maybe then we can live forever, but not so. Other studies have shown that if people with very little body fat drastically cut calories they can actually do more harm than good to their health. Therefore, we have to count every calorie, know if our body fat is appropriate, exercise enough to keep our bones strong -- then it could be worth it.

The fountain of youth, living forever; the temptation to jump on board is tantalizing. The prudent thing to do is proceed with caution, understand the positives and negatives, and keep a discerning mind. It might be wonderful to live a long life, but not if it's one burdened by osteoporosis and fractured bones.

Over all I do believe that lowering, your calorie intake will help you live longer and healthier lives. I am not saying do a drastic change just a gradual change by each week lower the amount you eat. Americans eat far too much at each meal. I like eating half of my meals and eating snacks throughout the day.

Source:

www.Chef-Linda.com

Oprah.com

Naturalnews.com