If you eat enough food to exceed your systems’ physiological limits, the excess food will putrefy, ferment, or rancidify, causing symptoms like “stomach rumblings,” gas pains, flatus odor, and belching.

At Morter HealthSystem, we believe the average American eats twice as much food as he/she needs.  If we took half of the food that’s put on the average American’s meal table and sent it someplace else, two things would happen: 1) We would be healthier, and 2) the people who ate it would be sicker.  In the first place, we consume more calories than we need.  In the second place, our food is so highly processed that it isn’t good for anyone even though we’re used to it.  We would be healthier by reducing the amount of improper foods in our diets.

Your body tells you when you have supplied it with enough nutrition for the moment.  In addition, your body tells you when it needs to be refueled.  There are two specific times you shouldn’t eat: 1) when you are not hungry and 2) when your temperature is above 100 degrees F.

We have a tendency to “eat by the clock”: Many American families have a typical schedule of breakfast at 7:00, lunch at noon, and dinner at 6:00. However, ideally, you should eat when your body tells you it is time, not when the clock strikes.

And when you have a fever, your body is very busy cleaning out and repairing itself.  There is a solid basis for the old adage, “starve a fever.”  You have probably noticed that you lose your appetite when you have a fever.  Your body is telling you that it doesn’t need replenishing just then.  So, don’t eat until your temperature goes down to under 100 degrees F and your appetite returns.  In the meantime, drink only water – not fruit juice, just water.

You are much less likely to overeat good, whole foods than you are to overeat processed, incomplete foods.  Fragmented foods aren’t fully satisfying.  Our bodies crave the parts that are missing.  How often do you leave the dinner table feeling full but not quite satisfied?  It isn’t that you haven’t had enough to eat; it’s that some essential nutrients are still missing.  Often, sodium is the missing ingredient – not inorganic salt (table salt) but organic sodium.  You generally don’t suffer from the I’m-full-but-I-want-something-else syndrome when you have had generous portions of vegetables with your meal.  Your body knows when it has been satisfied.

Link to Morter March Monday Rebroadcast