Food choice affects your physical health, and, more importantly, your brain health.
The average human brain weighs about three pounds. Although composed mostly of fat, the human brain regulates human basic behaviors - eating, feeling, moving, sleeping, and thinking. Your brain health is important because the brain is the center of your emotions, fears, hopes, and personality. Despite the critical importance of brain health, the human brain is most vulnerable to damage that can be sustained through poor nutrition and neurotoxic pollutants, both of which can impair brain health and the nervous system.
Remember, unlike most other body organs, your brain cannot repair itself. Research studies have shown that Parkinson's disease, a nervous system disease, is caused by foreign chemicals and neurotoxic pollutants. According to an article published in the Journal of the American Association, environmental chemicals and neurotoxic pollutants are responsible for many cases of Parkinson's disease.
Food choice is important to brain health because the food you eat today is different from that consumed by your ancestors. What was healthy in yesteryears may not be healthy today. The food you eat today contain not only foreign substances in the blood that may injure the brain, but also hormones and brain messengers that may disrupt brain activities and hence damage brain health.
Therefore, your food choice should be based on not just availability, taste, and cost, but, most importantly, on the absence or presence of neurotoxic pollutants - an important factor in brain health.
Your ancestors used to derive their source of protein from meat and dairy products. Today, the nutrition landscape has completely changed for the worse. Due to increasing industrialization and state-of-the-art technology in farming, the meat, poultry, fish, and dairy products are responsible for about as much as 80 percent of chemical pollutants in the American diet that may damage brain health.
In addition to neurotoxic pollutant loads in animal products, red meat is loaded with iron. Excess iron in the blood increases heart disease and dementia. Unlike women who can lose their blood through menstrual cycles, men can unload excess iron only through blood donation. This explains why men are more prone to heart disease and dementia than women are; however, after menopause, women have similar risks of heart disease as men have. Accumulation of excess iron in areas of the brain, where dopamine (a brain messenger for communication and coordination) is manufactured, can result in brain cell loss - one of the causes of brain diseases and dementia. Excess iron may adversely affect brain health.
Your ancestors ate mostly natural food. Today, in the supermarket, we have an array of processed food loaded with chemicals, preservatives, food colorings and taste enhancers, which are enemies of brain health. For example, baking soda, baking powder, and commercially baked food items are all loaded with aluminum, which is a toxic metal that damages the human brain. Heavy metals, such as aluminum, lead, and mercury, are toxic to brain health. Your ancestors ate fresh deep-sea fish, while nowadays most of the fish are farm raised, which are loaded with toxic chemicals and neurotoxic pollutants.
So, you have to change your mentality about your food choice: milk is a cocktail of chemical toxins, and man-made hormones; meat is not the high-protein meat your ancestors consumed; fish is not deep-sea fish caught by your ancestors. The food you eat may taste better, but not necessarily healthier. Think before you eat. Your food choice has a direct impact on your brain health.
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