Food and Nutrition

I hold a Diploma in Nutrition from The Plaskett Nutritional Medicine College. I have an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Biology that gives me a good underpinning of the biochemistry of nutrition. My interest in health and diet is long standing. There are no formal standards for Nutritional Therapy in the UK at present, but a qualified practitioner will normally be registered with BANT, the British Association for Nutritional Therapy.

Where to start?

Changing dietary habits is one of the most difficult changes a person can make. Dietary habits are ,literally, the habits of a lifetime. According to the UK 2000 Time Use Survey, 15% of men interviewed admit that they do not cook meals - neither for themselves nor for anyone else.
Evidently, then, the change begins in your kitchen. What products you keep in stock and how you prepare them is the main indicator of how good or bad your everyday diet is. (I use the term everyday, because ice cream once in a while is fine, ice cream every day is not. Ditto crisps/chips, commercial baked goods, alcohol, sweets, and soft drinks).

If your shelves are overstocked and you haven't seen the back of them in ages, you've got out-of-date food that has lost it's Qi and/or nutritional value. You're wasting money on things you don't eat.
If all you see are bright paper packages and nicely coloured boxes, it's not Christmas - you're spending too much on convenience and snack foods.
If you larder is stocked with stuff that you mother wouldn't recognise, you're probably on the right track.

What?? I hear you say. My mother made the best Yorkshire pudding/mince pies/Sunday Roast ever! Well, she probably did. But I write that because the whole point of change is that you really change and that includes getting a whole new shelf full of foods. I am not going to write a whole list of don'ts because that's not my style. Instead, the following ingredients should always be on hand, to ensure a healthy, varied, nutritionally dense diet.

Brown rice
Seaweed salad or flaked nori
Chickpeas, dried or ready-to-use
Almonds, tightly sealed against air and light
Dried figs, a great snack if somewhat high in sugar
Dried Goji berries, another great snack and superfood
Milled organic flax seed
And in the fridge, carrots, beetroot, salad greens, garlic,

Toxins

I like to try to find as many substantiating reports as I can to allow me to prove the toxin doctrine. Here's a good quote:

"Unless cadmium is unique in its mechanism," NIEHS' Dmitry A. G ordenin, Ph.D., said, "it would seem that environmental factors may cause genetic defects and cancer not only by attacking our DNA directly but also by undermining the mechanisms by which faulty DNA replication is repaired." from EurekAlert

The Bix Chemical Mix in our bodies

'Unacceptable risk' of chemical disaster concerning the 30 000 chemicals used in the EU whose commercial value is well known, but whose impact on health is not understood. Second National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals Nutritional Therapy concerns itself with elimination of accumulated toxins. Many people question the identity of 'toxins'. This report gives a good summary: Body Burden - the pollution in people
Pollution Stigma Sticks to Teflon Regarding information about birth defects in DuPont workers, suppressed by the company for 22 years. States, ominously:

"PFCs (perfluorochemicals) virtually never break down in the environment and have been found to contaminate most of the US population, including 92 percent of children tested to date."

Pesticides

Pesticide Link to Parkinsons
Garden pesticides withdrawn
Pesticides mix 'threatens health' with the chilling quote:

"If you consider that each one of us is walking around with hundreds of chemicals in our bodies, that couldn't have been there 50 or 60 years ago because they didn't exist on the planet, then you can see the level of complexity of the problem."

Plastics

Plastics spoil mouse eggs Food-packaging compound affects reproductive cell division.

Heavy Metals

Dust fears on Underground about the level of pollutants found on the London Underground.

Cadmium

Cadmium Disrupts Ability of Cells to Fight Cancer

Mercury

Blood mercury levels high in some women
Mercury Toxicity in the Human Brain: Knowns and Unknowns.
Trailer for the movie "The Beautiful Truth" showing mercury vapor r ising off mercury amalgam fillings

Lead

Miniscule Blood Lead Levels Impair Intelligence Our old friend, lead. Of course, leaded petrols contribute hugely to environmental lead levels. Yet another reason to leave the car at home and jump on your bike!
Lead Exposure Causes Violent Crime in Children. Children exposed to higher lead levels before the age of 7 years are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes as adults.

Clues to Dioxin danger.
Swimming pool vapours linked to child asthma. Article about chlorine and the health of lung tissue.

Lords back water fluoridation I am not sure about the fluoridation issue as I am not yet very well read on the matter.