Great! Being interested is a good first step. As far as raw vegetables go, you don't have to eat all vegetables raw to be healthy. I eat a combination of raw and cooked. I usually make a jumbo salad once a day for lunch and that covers the raw part of my diet. A typical salad will include lettuce, tomato, cucumber, garbanzo beans, and one serving of whole grain pasta or a slice of whole grain bread. But it can, and often does, change from day to day. Sometimes I might include some cooked broccoli, cauliflower, peas or peppers. A salad can be a combination of raw and cooked.

I'll often make a hearty vegetable soup for my evening meal, for which I never use recipes. Recipes drive me crazy because I like to be creative, at least as far as meal preparation goes. Don't be afraid to experiment; soup can be anything you want it to be. The only guidlines I would suggest: Try to limit starch to one serving, whether it's rice, barley, corn, potatoes, or pasta, etc.. And, after the soup is cooked, if you want to add a little extra-virgin olive-oil for flavor, I would suggest measuring it. Keep in mind that it's a fat and therefore is calorie dense. I add one teaspoon for flavoring soups and salads. Also, try to include a cruciferous vegetable and some dark leafy greens. A healthy soup should include a variety of healthy vegetables. Last but not least, add some legumes for extra protein and fiber. Naturally, you can include different vegetables, starches and legumes every day for variety, so no two soups will ever be the same.

I like your lifestyle
 

Fox, I like your thinking! Everything in moderation I say is a very good motto. The only Adventist that I knew well didn't eat meat but did eat fish. I don't know if that is "common" or not. :wave:

Hi village PL: The topic of food what we eat how often, its value, its concerns etc is in itself emotional and the vacillating of opinion my medical experts/scientist only exacerbates those emotions. Again 7 billion people times the number of combination/permutations makes the study difficult. for instnce we are not all susceptible to the same food allegeries. some folks store fat while other have systems that excrete it easily.

I love vegetables. I evn know a song about vegetables...We are known as vitaminized vegetables I am christopher Carrot......... :D

I certainly don't make light of this issue nor the good information that you offer but honestly the experts have since the beginning changed their opinions so often that like fashion I expect opinions to recyccle every twenty years. so I'l stick with my regime of moderation and wait for the experts to catch up with me and tell me I am right

thank goodness red wine and dark chocolate are currently considered good for you (in moderation)

I have three aunts in their 90's still living independently and adjacently and they squabble over who is the best condition to mow their yards. All of them were raised eating Tennessee fresh farm vegetables and meats full of fat...sausage, salted ham and delicious ham gravy made with coffee, fried chicken, cow's milk.

That's not research by any means...they all pray, maybe that's their secret to longevity. that and hard work and stubborn independence? Hope i got their genes!

I see what you mean. Different people have different emotions associated with food and that's why some people have eating disorders, for example. But that shouldn't be a reason to not talk about Adventists or healthy eating in general, should it?

It's not the purpose of any study to predict what will happen with every person or what will happen to all 7 billion people on the planet. You're making it unnecessarily complicated. 7 billion people = a Red herring.

I never heard that one. Feel free to sing a few more bars. ;)

I promise you that if you spend enough time studing diet and health, you will eventually find that most good advice doesn't change. For example, has any bonafied food expert ever said that processed foods promote health? No! That has never changed. Has anyone ever said that fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains are bad for you? No! That has never changed. And, most importantly, the concept of "calorie restriction" has never changed: Calorie restriction combined with optimal nutrition has the potential to yield the best health and longevity possible. (This assumes you don't go below your ideal weight or BMI of around 18 to 19)

Don't sweat the small stuff like trying to decide between butter, margerine or coffee etc. Those are red herrings especially designed to make it seem like everything is uncertain.

We can all find anecdotes or testimonials to prove whatever we want to prove. For example, my grandfather lived to age 97 and his lifestyle was a mixture of good and bad. Was it a case of the good things overcoming the bad? He worked hard but was not at all religious. I don't think he ate a lot of processed foods or red meat but he had a really big waistline at middle age. He had just one son who made it into his 70s (died of cancer) and 4 daughters who all had cancer. Yet both my grandfather and grandmother never had cancer. If they had anti-cancer genes, what happened to them?

Here's a good one: Do you remember Jeanne Calment the woman who lived to the age of 122? Her father lived to 94 and her mother lived to 86. That's pretty good but was no indication that she would live to 122. If she had special genes, where did they come from? She had one daughter who died at age 36. What does this anecdote prove, if anything?

If we all sit around hoping that our genes will pull us through, we may be sadly mistaken. Over 70,000 Adventists were in the study, with basically the same genes as the rest of us, and yet their average life expectancy is 88 while ours is only 78.

It is definitely genetics that they are able to exist independently into their 90s while still performing chores......such as lawn mowing........

God Bless the three of them..........whatever they did, it worked for them.
No doubt they never even worried about their "diet".....just ate what was available and what they enjoyed.

There are plenty of nationalities that live well into their nineties and ate all of the "no no's" of today's healthy dietary guidelines........

Besides their good genes for longevity, I'm certain your aunts' faith and prayer did not hurt.......but helped them, to relieve stress, etc.

Just worrying about one's diet every waking moment would lead to stress, in my book anyway.

As another poster said, "all things in moderation".....not excluding any food group......seems wise to me.

So many today are on an overload of prescription and non prescription drugs......makes one wonder about all of the side effects connected with Big Pharma.

Again, God Bless your three aunts............no doubt, you do have their genes.

The title of this thread is somewhat misleading.
 

(Most) Catholics are meat eaters. I am pretty sure that (Most) Methodists and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Baptists and Unitarians and Presbyterians are too.


My dad was 92 and cutting the grass and drinking almost a case of beer a day until someone cut off his beer. He went downhill after that. I know he was a praying man. I hope St. Peter had a cold one for him at the pearly gates.



Could someone explain again what snarky means?

Either have some coffee or go back to bed, Gracie.

With regard to those aunts who succumbed to cancer......perhaps it wasn't their diet, but the environment they lived or worked in?

Industrial pollutants, etc. or just city fumes and such......?

My own mother in law passed fairly "young" at 54 from cancer.
The family believed that it was from all of the x-rays she had been exposed to in the 1950's while pregnant and then thereafter........

Snarky: choleric, crabby, cranky, cross, crotchety, fiery, grouchy, grumpy, irascible, peevish, perverse, pettish, petulant, prickly, quick-tempered, raspy, ratty, short-tempered, snappish, snappy, irritable, snippety, snippy, stuffy, testy, waspish

That said, it is frequently misused, to mean sleazebaggish (for want of a better word, I made that up) or menacing, as in something mob-related.

Ditto: If I never had meat, caffeine, sugar, dairy etc, I would die of boredom .

:BigApplause: Take a bow! Good one.

I realize that finding snarkyness, which exists in the eye of the beholder, is easier than dealing with scientific facts. But back to the topic at hand: Does anyone have any comment about the above statement in bold print?

Here it is again with slightly different wording: Over 73,000 Adventists were in the study, with basically the same gene pool as the rest of us Americans, and yet their average life expectancy is 88 while our life expectancy is only 78.

Maybe theirs is the one true church?