When we talk about variety in the nutrition, it means also in the same group of nutriments. But the reality is that the aliment that is on the base of the nutrition pyramid, and the one we have to eat more, the cereals, we only eat one type of them. However, we do eat different types of fruits or vegetables, meat and fish, or we should have to ;-)

In Spain we use to have breakfast cereals, biscuits or pastries, all of them are wheat; only in the case of cereals we can find maize. On the morning break we eat a sandwich: more wheat. We have lunch or dinner pasta or pizza, and we use to accompany them with bread. And again more wheat in the afternoon breaks: biscuits, cereal bars, pastries… Scarcely we eat rice or some maize product (paella is only eat in festivities!), and few people even know that there are other cereals: barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, millet, soy, quinoa, amaranth, etc. And even more, most of the wheat based products are made from white wheat flour, instead of brown flour.

In Latin countries nutrition is excessively based on wheat. In France the traditional baguette and croissant, in Italy pasta and pizzas, and in Spain all of them. And growing more and more, due to the influence of manufactured food, like Nestlé. They produce more and more tasty products based on wheat and milk and they convince us that “their biscuits are rich in cereals”, and “their diary products are rich in calcium”. But there’s only one “cereals” in biscuits: always wheat and a lot of children are allergic to milk, a 44% of less than 5 years old in Spain, being the most important allergy. These factories used to add artificial vitamins, bacteriofils, minerals and fibre to their products, in order to make them more commercial, when for example, artificial calcium is not assimilated by the body. In this way, we thing that a bar of cereals we can get enough fibre, vitamins, carbohydrates and calcium, so it seems that we have almost every nutricient we need for all the day! But the real source of vitamins are fruit, of fibre are vegetables and raw cereals. But what they don’t tell us is that they add a lot of sugar in this products, that is not good for teeth, for hungry (an hour afterwards the body asks for sugar again), and other unhealthy reasons. And we think that bifidus make us stronger against flu and cold, but the real source of vitamins that makes us stronger are fruits.

All naturopaths and alternative medicine therapists tell us that milk is not good for health. The orthomolecular nutrition naturopath Cala H. Cervera tell us in her blog Todoterapias.com: “milk makes the immunity system to get into alert, and that can cause chronic inflammation, allergies and, after some time, weak our immunity system… diary products produce a lot of mucus in the body, blocking the lymphatic system (the one that helps us to detoxicate us) and blocking the intestinal absorption and congesting respiratory system”

Concerning wheat, the main problem is that is mostly white or refined one. Michael Pollan’s book “In defense of food” says: “Benefits of raw cereals can be explained because the richness in nutricients: fibres in bran, folic acid and other group B vitamins in germen, as well as antioxidants and minerals … but none of them can explain, by himself, the raw cereals virtues”. So if we take white flour, then we enrich it with all the nutritients of a raw cereal: fibre, folic acid, B vitamins, etc, we don’t get the same benefits that the raw cereal. So even if alimentary industry insists in synthesize products that are similar to natural ones, they will never get the same benefits as the natural ones.

Some naturopaths even recommend to completely eliminating wheat from our diet, because it is a modern cereal to which our body is not adapted and is not well digested by our body, producing toxins that accumulate in different places of our body. Cala H. Cervera says: “this cereal (wheat) is very irritating to our body, because the high gluten rate it has. Consuming it sometimes is not a problem, but in huge quantities and everyday ingestion can wear away the intestinal cells producing absorption problems, stomach aches, inflammation, diarrhoea and/or constipation and a lot of other intestinal symptoms”.

In Phillippe Barraqué’s book “Et si c’était le gluten?” (And if it was because gluten?) it’s said: “Several persons said to have a high sensitivity to gluten and eliminate bread, cereals, etc form their diet. Then, they feel very much better mostly on digestive level. This is why the fact that a poor variety nutrition, creates not only a dependency alimentary phenomena but also slowly stresses our body, weakness the immunity system and produces reactions against the incriminate aliments. If you eat a lot of bread, cereals, etc, some day your body will say ‘stop’”.

The variety in food doesn’t consist on eating different kinds of pasta, bread, pizzas and biscuits. Variety is to eat different cereals. I encourage you to go shopping in organic groceries; you can find pasta from different kinds of cereals and products based on soya. On Internet you can find infinity of sites about cooking with different cereals. You can search "gluten free recipes" for example, or "vegetarian recipes". I recommend you some here. You don’t need to be vegetarian to eat soya, millet or buckwheat! It's good for everybody’s health!


Photo by Meg Forbes