On Healthy Living

The University of Michigan Integrative Medicine department has built a new food pyramid based around healing foods. The bottom of the pyramid is water, and the top is meat and “acompaniments” such as dark chocolate and alcohol. (You can see the pyramid here.)

In between are fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, seasonings, healthy fats, dairy and eggs. The cool thing about this pyramid is that you can click on each section and find healing foods particular to that group.

For example, clicking on seasonings gets you information about the health benefits of tumeric (anti-inflamatory), ginger (motion sickness), garlic (helps with infection and can lower cholesterol), peppermint (prevents gas) and cayenne pepper (improves circulation, eases tooth pain and increases appetite). Clicking on fish and seafood gives you information on the amount of omega-3 fatty acid in different types of fish and explains why that is important, as well as saying which fish you shouldn’t eat because of high mercury content.

Each section also underscores the importance of buying organic, pesticide-free food.

This looks like a really great basic education in natural, healing foods. I hope you all check it out and think about this pyramid as you plan your meals this week.

Sarah White wrote this on May 16th, 2005 and filed it under Healthy Living, Healthy Cooking, Healthy Eating, Healthy Recipes, Health Foods, Vegetarian Cooking, Raw Foods, Natural Remedies |