The past weekend, I was was nutrition seminar put on by a local graduate of the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. her name was Rebecca Johns ~ Certified Nutrition & Wellness Coach.

It was at a local Tai Quan Do facility for the athletes their; I went with my good friend Michele Katz.

I had just finished a great bike ride and was ready to get filled up with some exciting insight, not to mention to my surprise… her homemade Protein Bar. This isn’t just any protein bar and certainly not junk packed as “health food”.

Here’s Rebecca’s recipe for “protein bites”.

Ingredients:

• 2C Raw Oatmeal
• 1c Protein Powder
• 1/2c flax seed, ground
• 1/2c wheat germ
• 2c trail mix – almonds, cashews, dried fruit, etc
• 1/2c ground walnuts
• 1/2c coconut
• 1c honey
• 2c peanut butter

Procedure:

• Mix all ingredients together and press in a baking pan. Cut in 24 bars
• Calories 310
• carbs 31 g.
• fiber4.2g
• protein 11g

I want to share of the best insights she focused on that day.

In the recipe above, when you look at the quality of the ingredients you know you are getting a Nutrient Rich Food and the information provided from calories to carbs, to fiber, to protein is just plain straight forward.

So to that extent, reading the nutrition data on the label is useful.

When it is not as useful is when you are reading a label for nutrition data about ingredients that you can’t spell, or decipher. That’s when nutritional data is often misleading. “Net carbs”, “real carbs”, serving sizes, calories, definitions, sodium, type of fat etc; there is so much label manipulation that goes on, it would boggle your mind.

You can learn all the ins and outs of label reading here; the guru is Jeff Novick of the National Health Association.

The first and most obvious question would be, are you eating predominantly nutrient rich calories or nutrient poor calories? The difference in terms of the consequences in your body is huge, not just in terms of weight, but in terms of your health your ability to function and perform well.

See the Food Class System to see the difference between a nutrient rich food and a nutrient poor food and remember this, it’s not just the calories that count; it’s not even just the nutrients that count, it’s the quality of the nutrients that count!

Are you eating, health promoting protein, real food carbohydrates, essential fat…?

What’s the point of eating whey protein or huge amounts of animal protein, or synthetic vitamins… if these sources of nutrients are of a poor quality?

Despite the nutrition data, the quality of nutrients from those foods and the negative impact they can have on your system if eaten in significant quantities, are bound to have negative health consequences.

In this seminar, Rebecca was talking about pre workout and post working meals, because she was talking to an athletic group of people. I thought her points were incredibly authentic… here we just a few that I am paraphrasing.

1. It’s not just the nutrition data, it’s the quality of the ingredients that matter.
2. How do you feel when you eat one food versus another?
3. Do you know that you can feel and perform allot better when you are eating real food and food that promotes your health in an optimal way? You’ll know once you make transition.
4. Hydration comes from water, but also from the food you eat. Eat allot of fruits and vegetable and you’ll be drinking all day.
5. Coconut water, is one of nature’s best re hydrants
6. Managing your personal energy level is incredibly important to being able to take care of yourself and perform and we’re not just talking your food energy, but your vital energy.
7. Food Matters – she played this video, and I suggest you watch this video online.
8. Make the Protein Bites above!

This is so exciting to see the Nutrient Rich food revolution taking such a hold, in martial arts dojangs to the mainstream. And one of the lessons in this food revolution in this… food quality is everything.

Nutrient Rich is not a specific diet you have to stick to, it’s a quality standard you maintain… more on that in my next post.

Nutrition Data must start with food quality first, if the food quality is there, you can be sure that the nutrition data is actually true.

The title of this article is from an acquaintance of mine Rip Esselstyn.I know Rip through his father Dr Caldwell Esselstyn.

Here is an excerpt from his article Attention Athletes: Eat Your Vegetables!

Alex Rodriguez. Barry Bonds. Jose Conseco. Andy Pettitte. Jason Giambi. Roger Clemens. Baseball players in the news, all of them in hot water for using illegal substances for a competitive edge.

As a former professional athlete with friends active in all areas of sports, I know that steroids and other illicit substances have permeated just about every sport. A feeling has sprung up among athletes that if you’re not on this stuff, you’re at a disadvantage. You’re just not going to be as good as the next guy.

But the secret to hitting fifty home runs, to stealing a hundred bases, to pitching a perfect game, doesn’t involve needles or pills, the cream or the clear.

The secret is no farther away than the local grocery store, where no one needs an illegal prescription or a shady doctor. It’s right there, in the produce section, where you’ll find Nature’s naturally lean, bad-ass performance enhancers: plant foods such as whole grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, and nuts. Instead of injecting themselves with human growth hormones and steroids, instead of having those monsters coursing through their 65,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries, by consuming plant-powered foods, athletes’ systems will be bursting with vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants, and they’ll not only be on their way to MVP seasons but also to the best health of their lifetimes.

Read More…

What is so powerful about this article, is that it’s true and reinforces the new mentality that is sweeping the nation one person at a time – that it’s your lifestyle that determines your health, how you look and feel, and perform!

So many people spend a lifetime, trying to find the magic pill or powder, some substance that will help them overcome the common ills, created unbeknownst to them, mainly by the way they eat. They think low energy, what they don’t know as poor performance due to their lack of true health, and the fight against disease are normal and natural, but they aren’t… just common because of our modern day way of life that is simply caught up and unhealthy.

What has also become common is thinking that that we need to seek performance enhancing substances to function and perform at peak, when we haven’t even begun to proactively tap the potential of our own lifestyle – how we think and live.

Of course, a big BIG part of your lifestyle is how you eat. The quality of the food you eat, whether you eat Nutrient Rich foods or nutrient poor foods is going to have a huge and compounding effect on your energy level, your health, how fit you are, and what you are able to achieve in your life.

Most people just can’t get it, that they need to change the quality of their diet, not simply seek another way to lose weight. They will naturally lose weight, when they focus on eating for health, functioning and performing better in a now more active and healthy lifestyle.

Rip Esselstyn has has it right. As the founder of www.PerformanceLifestyle.com, and author of the PerformanceLifestyle blog, this mentality is clear, near and dear to my heart and hopefully yours.

When how you live is driven by your ability to function, to have quality of life and the capacity to perform “well”, you will look at how you eat and your overall lifestyle so much differently. You will finally leave the eat less diet mentality ingrained in our heads by a diet industry that knows very little about living a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

You will learn everything you can about eating better, about eating Nutrient Rich foods and eating for health!

~ JAM
John Allen Mollenhauer

With eating Nutrient Rich food being a PerformanceLifestyle solution, it is no wonder that this headline was very attractive. I saw this on the Internet today – you can see the 100 best foods for boosting productivity according to FoodProof.com.

Now these may not actually be the 100 “best” foods according the nutrient profiles, but the chart is helpful. Is it any wonder that so many 90+% of the foods are plant based?

My friends, plants are where all nutrients come from, originally!

~ John Allen Mollenhauer

Athletes demand healthy, vitamin rich foods to provide energy for their training and competitive needs. Hydroponically grown food is meeting those demands in Beijing during these summer Olympics.

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) August 21, 2008 — The Chinese government is working hard to meet athlete demand for organic, hydroponics food rich in vitamins and minerals, as China’s 2008 Summer Olympics go into full swing in Beijing.

To provide nutrient-rich food for the athletes and other visitors at this year’s Olympics, China set up a vast system of organic greenhouse farms to match the organic, hydroponics food supply success achieved when Australia produced many tons of quality, organic, hydroponically-grown, vitamin-rich fruit and vegetables during the 2000 Australian Olympiad.

The Chinese are mastering hydroponics rapidly, especially as they produce fruits and vegetables for the 2008 Olympics

According to hydroponics experts Evegeniy Stefanov Yordanov, Michael James Straumietis, and Robert Charles Higgins, hundreds of hydroponics farmers were contracted by the Australian Olympics Committee to provide quality hydroponics produce for the 25,000 athletes, officials and visitors at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Straumietis, Higgins and Yordanov are acknowledged as the number one world authorities on hydroponics and bigger hydroponics yields.

Several years ago, the trio founded the Seattle-based hydroponics nutrients company Advanced Nutrients, which manufactures and distributes highly-respected hydroponics nutrients formulas worldwide.

Straumietis has spent lots of time in China studying Chinese hydroponics and agriculture.

"The Olympics are a special challenge for food producers because athletes demand organic food that’s rich in vitamins and minerals, and because the Olympics food supply is strictly regulated by in-country and international Olympics committees," Michael James Straumietis explains. "Hydroponics allows strict quality control, reliable supply, environmental benefits, and it produces high-nutrition crops."

Indeed, the 2000 Sydney Olympics proved that the hydroponics industry is the only farming sector that can produce a reliable supply of crops sufficient in quality and quantity to satisfy the demands for nutritious natural food.

"Australia wisely chose to rely on hydroponics for its 2000 Olympics, because soil-grown crops could easily have been ruined by adverse weather, which is not a problem with hydroponics," notes Robert Charles Higgins. "Better yet, as is the case in North America and Europe, hydroponics crops cost less to produce and buy than field crops."

Advanced Nutrients co-founder Evegeniy Stefanov Yordanov says China has set up a government-private industry partnership to grow organic food for the country’s Olympics food supply.

"The Chinese are mastering hydroponics rapidly, especially as they produce fruits and vegetables for the 2008 Olympics," Yordanov explains. "In fact, the Chinese government created a highly-regulated, guarded, organic, greenhouse-grown plant production infrastructure to guarantee the quantity and quality of the fruit and vegetable supply for Olympic athletes and visitors."

Increased reliance on organic, hydroponically-grown food for the China Olympics is also mirrored by increasing demand for organic, hydroponically-grown food in China’s expanding middle-class sector, Straumietis says, noting that hydroponics growing is also environmentally-safer than typical field agriculture.

"Fact is, organic fruits and vegetables grown hydroponically for the China Olympics are packed with vitamins and minerals, which means athletes perform better," Straumietis explains. "And China is able to meet the demands for quality food better than if it was relying on regular soil agriculture. Healthy, organic, hydroponics food wins the gold medal at the 2008 China Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Want to find out more about hydroponics farming and Advanced Nutrients? Visit www.advancednutrients.com.