Many weight loss programmes do not promote health. They focus on a quick way to lose weight. But after the diet, the weight tend to pile back on again. When you adopt a strategy of healthy eating for weight loss, not only do you lose weight, but your health improves.

One of the healthy foods that can be consumed, to your hearts content and still lose weight, is pickled or fermented food. Before you rush out and buy a jar, you may find that learning to pickle your own will offer better health promotion benefits.

Traditional pickling of foods is made by adding salt (use Celtic or sea salt) to the raw food, normally a vegetable, such as cabbage or cucumbers. Water may be added, vinegar may be used as an adjunct and the food may be pressed, depending on what it is. It is then left for a few days. The probiotic bacteria in the food produces lactic acid which preserves the food.

Any food can be pickled. The limit is simply how the end result tastes. Asian people tend to be keen on pickles.

Fermented, or pickled, food contain many healthy nutrients and qualities:

• you have all the benefits of the vegetable, such as mineral content and fibre, in a more potent and tasty form
• you have all the benefits of the raw food with its enzymes and other nutrients that are destroyed by cooking
• probiotic bacteria improves digestion and boosts the immune system
• the process increases the vitamin C content, resulting in a healthier immune system
• fermentation creates new nutrients such as many of the B vitamins
• fermentation increases the antioxidants available
• fermentation removes and neutralises toxins in foods – which is explains why eastern soy (fermented) is so much healthier than western (unfermented soy)
• the resulting lactic acid improves circulation, helps to reduce hypertension, improves the digestive system
• this is a good diabetics food
• by adding seasoning such as ginger, garlic, dill, turmeric and other herbs and spices, you get the benefit from these as a bonus
• pickles are low in calories, so you can eat them to excess with no fear of either gaining weight or damaging your health

Shop bought pickles are usually pasteurised, killing off all the benefits of the fermented food. They tend to use vinegar as the main fermenting medium, but this is not so beneficial as the slower way with salt. You don’t need much salt and the result is not salty.

To make your own pickles, the book below is a great source of information and recipes. Be wise in choosing the way to lose weight. Healthy eating for weight loss focuses primarily on your health. Weight loss comes naturally.

Get “Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods” from Amazon

or Fishpond (Australia)

Many people are wise enough to realise the benefits of healthy eating for weight loss. However, the benefits go much further. Healthy eating will also ensure not only longevity, but quality of life, too.

There is a saying that goes something like this “One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive. The remaining three quarters keeps your doctor alive”. That statement offers many incites. Let’s examine some of them more closely.

A small portion of your food only ‘keeps you alive”. It doesn’t keep you healthy, just alive. Probably, a diet of sawdust would keep you alive, but it wouldn’t keep you healthy.

A large portion of food “keeps your doctor alive”. In other words, it makes you unhealthy. When a diet is not health promoting, it will make you hungry. So you eat more unhealthy food, get more hungry and ultimately sending you spiralling downwards towards obesity and disease.

This is great news for your doctors and specialists, as well as the drug companies. But it’s not such good news for you or your family.

The standard American diet (SAD), a common diet throughout the western world, contributes to weight gain, hunger and disease. It is not a healthy diet by any stretch of the imagination. The so called ‘staple’ foods are some of the most unhealthy foods.

What is even more sad is that doctors have almost no training in nutrition. And yet, that’s where many people go for nutritional advice. Here is what one specialist is quoted as saying.

“I had been a practicing pediatric gastroenterologist for 25 years. During that time I watched some really beautiful children and young men and women die under my care because I had nothing more to offer, and unfortunately what I had offered many times only made their lives more miserable. Recent health problems led me to read about … orthomolecular (nutritional) medicine and it has been like discovering an advanced ancient civilization that I had no idea had ever existed. … I have become a very angry man. I’ve just realized that for 25 years I had been making my patients sick and big pharma rich. I’ve just realized that those chronic hepatitis patients that died waiting for a liver transplant could have been easily cured with (a nutritional supplement). I realize now that my toximolecular medical education only led me to do more harm than good. That is not a good feeling to have.”
Edward Cichowicz, M.D., Pediatric Gastroenterologist

Learn the secrets of healthy eating for weight loss and watch your health improve at the same time. A win-win situation.