Whole foods provide everything your body needs to digest, process, and use the nutrients contained in those foods.  Whole foods carry with them the enzymes necessary for carrying out natural physiological functions.  Mother nature provides us with ready-made whole foods in the form of vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds, and nuts.  Beef or chicken could be whole foods, but not the way we eat it.  You can get everything your body needs to process beef or other animals if you eat the whole thing – fur, feathers, blood, and bones, instead of just the acid parts of flesh and organs.

Processed foods and refined foods are “phony” foods that inhibit health.  They are foreign to your body even if you have been consuming them for years.  They are strangers that excite your body to adapt its natural way of functioning.  Physiological adaptation leads to disease and discomfort.

Margarine is one of the most common phony foods in use today.  Margarine may be made from vegetable oils, but these oils have been mutilated.  Margarine is hydrogenated in processing.  Additional hydrogen ions are added to the vegetable oils.  Margarine is one of the worst processed foods you can put in your body.

The adaptations your body must make to process inappropriate food can be compared with the concessions it makes to other unusual circumstances.  For instance, if you walk around with an unnecessary lift in one shoe or in shoes with different height heels, your body can adapt to the unnatural situation.  However, after a while, you’ll experience aches and pains in your legs, back, and other areas of your body that are even farther removed from your feet.  Although the connection between the symptom and the cause may not be obvious, it is direct.  Phony foods act in much the same way.  If you don’t understand the universal effect food has on your body, it may not be apparent that your diet is the source of your physical distress; but the distress itself is obvious.

Phony foods are health inhibitors.  Some, like salt and spices, although grown in or mined from the ground, are useless to your body because they contain elements that provide no nutrition.  Others, like soft drinks and processed meats, are detrimental to your body because they contain substances with few natural enzymes, overstimulate the body, and waste the mineral of the alkaline reserve.  They inhibit natural healthful healing and replenishment because the body must adapt its natural functions to accommodate the highly-processed, industrial-strength foods.

Your body’s ability to adapt to health-inhibiting foods is a survival technique.  This talent for adaptation should be called on only in emergencies, not two or three times a day.  The goal of eating – if you want to be and stay healthy – is to give your body the whole foods it was designed to process – foods that provide fuel for generating energy and replenishing cells.