Whole Food Choices, a place to learn, share, and discuss the whole foods lifestyle. We invite you to visit our whole food choices forum while we are building the site and discuss your whole food lifestyle. Please let us know while your there what you would like to see on the site and the forum. Our hope is to build a community and we need your help to achieve our dreams.
Whole foods are foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed. Whole foods typically do not contain added ingredients, such as salt, carbohydrates, or fat. Examples of whole foods include unpolished grains, beans, fruits, vegetables and non-homogenized dairy products. Although originally all human food was whole food, one of the earliest uses of the term post-industrial age was in 1960 when the leading organic food organization called the Soil Association opened a shop in the name selling organic and whole grain products in London, UK.
The term is often confused with organic food, but whole foods are not necessarily organic, nor are organic foods necessarily whole.
The United States Food and Drug Administration defines whole grains as cereal grains containing the bran, endosperm and germ of the original grain. Federal Dietary Guidelines issued by the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion in 2005 recommended the consumption of at least three servings of whole grains each day, as there is evidence that they help cut risk of cancer and heart disease.
“Diets rich in whole and unrefined foods, like whole grains, dark green and yellow/orange-fleshed vegetables and fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, contain high concentrations of antioxidant phenolics, fibers and numerous other phytochemicals that may be protective against chronic diseases.”
A focus on whole foods offers three main benefits over a reliance on dietary supplements: they provide greater nutrition for being a source of more complex micronutrients, they provide essential dietary fiber and they provide naturally occurring protective substances, such as phytochemicals
First off lets dispel the notion of the whole foods diet. Eating whole foods is a lifestyle choice not a diet. When you choose to eat whole foods you are choosing to cut out man made preservatives and ingredients and opting to nourish your body with what is provided by nature. So what are whole foods?
Whole foods are any food it its natural state that grew from earth or had a mother and father. Whole foods have gone through little to no processing. Here are a few examples of whole foods and their processed counter parts.
If you try to eat your foods in the most natural a state possible then the better they are for you. Fresh fruits and vegetables are whole food, organic fresh fruits and vegetables are considered a higher class of whole food. When you grow your own organic garden and harvest them yourself that is as whole as it gets! When you add ranch dressing or other dressings to your fresh fruits and veggies you have turned your whole foods into into processed foods.