The foods we eat supply the nutrients and building blocks for the body. What you eat now has a dramatic effect on your health in the future. What you ate in the past has a great influence on your health at the present. As the saying goes: "You are what you eat." If you eat poor quality foods, you are going to have poor quality health. This is a law of nature. If you break the law you must suffer the penalty. The penalty for breaking the law of good nutrition is poor health.

Many people don't obey the law of good nutrition because they don't understand it. They have been misled by clever advertising and marketing efforts of food manufacturers and are lured by the enticements of appealing, yet nutritionally deficient, foods.

Obviously, if you don't eat enough food you will suffer from nutrient deficiency, disease and starvation. Some people, however, mistakenly believe that if they eat enough food to satisfy hunger, they will automatically get all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients their body needs to function properly. This idea is total nonsense. For example, if you ate nothing but donuts all day, every day, would you be healthy? No. Although you can fill up on donuts until you're blue in the face, your health will suffer. Donuts don't supply the body with all the nutrients it needs to be healthy no matter how many you can pack away in a day. You can be 50 pounds overweight and still be undernourished, simply because you eat poor quality foods.

When the body lacks even a single vitamin or mineral it can cause serious health problems even if there are plenty of other vitamins and minerals in the diet. Recent studies have shown that the majority of Americans do not get the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of most vitamins and minerals. Why is that? Because we eat too many donuts and other nutritionally deficient foods.

In general, the more processing a food undergoes the less nutritious it becomes. For example, whole wheat bread is more nutritious than white bread, fresh milk is more nutritious than powdered or canned milk, and hot oatmeal is more nutritious than Cocoa Puffs.

When foods have been refined, bottled, canned, dehydrated, and packaged, the nutrient content drops dramatically. For optimal health you need to avoid overly processed foods and focus on eating whole foods-whole grain products, fresh fruits and vegetables, and fresh meat, eggs, and dairy.