I really wanna start eating healthy.. Low cost would be preferable but I'm down to spend money. I just want good food, that's good for me. Obviously it can't be too expensive. So I'm just wondering how you all eat healthy? I feel like there would be some pretty wise individuals on here when it comes to the matter.

I find it too impractical to eat healthy all the time, so I supplement with whole foods vitamins. I didn't believe that you could actually feel a difference after taking a vitamin until I tried this:

http://www.megafood.com/...vitamins/mens-one-daily

You can get it at health food stores and online. Organic, great absorption, and you can can take it on an empty stomach! I really feel more alive when I take this. Maybe that can help ya...

The most important thing you can do for your health is to drink clean water, either distilled or from a natural spring.

you can never have too much fruit and veggies

nuts, seeds, legumes
rice, beans, grains
The bulk section is your friend

Sprouting is super easy and super cheap

seaweed, algae, mushrooms

super foods, juices, smoothies

made from scratch is the key here; avoid processed/packaged foods and go for the food in its whole natural state. Avoiding artificial colors/flavors and preservatives should go without saying.

I like to discuss here list of healthy foods that you can eat

1.Vegetables:No healthy list of foods is complete without vegetables. You should at least have artichokes, carrot, ginger, peppers, chilies, cabbage, spinach, zucchinis, leeks, olives, onions and even the spices.

2.Fruits
Fruits are known to give a lot of vitamins and nutrients that is why it is included in the healthy list of foods.

3.Whole grains and nuts
A good source of carbohydrates would be from bread and rice. But a much better and healthier option would be to eat whole grains

Try to get ahold of fractal enchantment and/or read a couple of his posts on the topic. He might be super radical, but it should give you some ideas.
For me, a big thing is to cut out industrial foods and to higher yourfruits and vegetable intake. I'm very happy that you have decided to start eating more healthy. Good food is vastly underrated in our culture.

All of these are good suggestions. This is the new method I am taking up because of High Cost. First of all always try to eat clean unproccesed stuff like say rice for carbs instead of a microwave chicken pot pie. Think organic. The closer to the earth your food is the better. Now because cost are so high I have decided to simply go to the food market and buy the most nutrient rich foods only, in terms of produce. For instance. Cucumber, iceberg lettuce, and select other produce items are on the lower end of the scale with nutrtion. Items like shaitake mushrooms, blueberries, rasberies, spinach are nutrient dense foods.

In short, learn to shop smart! Start reading up on and learn about nutrition. Eat a wide spectrum of fruits and vedgatables. A little hint you can use is the more vivid the color the more nutrient dense it is. Eat a rainbow of foods. lol. Think Earth when you eat.

Eating as healthy as you can is always going to benefit your body and soul. Trying to eat only 100% organic foods can get very spendy though.

Some key items:

1. Stay away from as much processed food as possible. If you have the ability to prepare your meal yourself, its usually going to be healthier.

2. Stay away from as much GMO foods as you can. This can be very difficult when eating processed foods. Almost all foods containing corn or soy are from GMO crops (thank Monsanto for this). Eat as much raw organic foods as you can afford.

3. Stay away from as much sugar as possible (in all its forms). The worst of course are the artificial sweeteners like Equal, or Splenda. These two lovelies contain the poison known as Aspartame (thank Donald Rumsfeld for this). Also steer clear of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). This is a very concentrated sweetener. Sugar is probably more dangerous to ones health than fats. The current system has manipulated people to believe that fats/cholesterol are the reason for everyone's poor health. However it can be more accurately traced to the amount of sugar (in all its forms) in one's diet.

4. Lots and lots of non-fluoridated water. Fluoride is considered a hazardous waste, but again we've been manipulated into believing it helps prevent tooth decay. That's a lie. The Nazi's put it in the water supply of the concentration camps in WWII....do you think its because they had the prisoners oral hygiene in mind?

5. Supplement your diet with vitamins/minerals if necessary. Most of us just don't have the time/money to eat all the foods our bodies need for optimum health. One of the most important ones is vitamin D3. There is so much research/proof of the benefits of this vitamin out there if one chooses to look for it. I won't go into the details here, but definitely check it out. A multi containing raw foods is also a very good idea. Another one is called Moringa Oleifera. This is considered a super-food and definitely worth checking out as well: http://www.moringasource.com/ And no I'm not affiliated with them.

Some good sites to research health and nutrition are:

http://www.naturalnews.com/index.html

http://www.mercola.com/

Happy reading and good health!

Yeh, heard some good stuff so far....

As a university student, I can definitely relate on the "inexpensive" part.

Basically, I eat a ****-ton of fresh fruits and vegetables. They don't have to be fancy, no need to break the bank, my primary snack foods are apples, pears, and carrots.

And eat whole foods, rather than processed foods. Quinoa is great, especially if it's cheap where you live (not cheap where I live ) ; lentils are a staple, I don't eat of brown rice but it goes in this category. Veggies all cooked together in various ways, lots of curry spices. As you'll find out if you read around here enough, curry spices are all quite good for you! AND they taste great.

My dessert is frequently chocolate, and I use honey as a sugar when making sweet things. And get some real salt, goddamnit! It'll make your life better. There's a health food store back home that sold bulk Brittany sea salt for almost nothing, it was chunky and greenish. GET SOME LIKE IT!

The trick is making sure what you eat is REAL FOOD. Not a food-like substance that's been packaged and labeled "healthy".
(see Michael Pollan)

Fractal should show up and give you the low-down on how to be really hardcore, but that's my take on it.

Dont drink tap water..find a wild spring if possible...or get a filter that structures the water with a vortex and ionizes the water..that is going to cost over a grand though so findaspring.com might be your friend. Tap water is toxic crap so avoid it whenever humanly possible.

Eat raw, fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. I dont eat grains at all-no rice, no wheat etc..I dont eat cooked food other than sometimes we will use organic maple syrup(which is boiled down) in certain recipes. I dont get near dairy. I might eat a dish every month or 2 with some steamed bok choy or whatever...but on a day to day basis I live as a raw vegan and nothing can beat this diet for me..

I will eat ALOT of fruit. You need tons of vitamine C..grams and grams of it every day..the stuff concentrates at like 90% around the brain and if you are only getting say 500mg..or 1g a day than that cant be ideal. I will probly eat 5 banannas a day, sometimes more..a few avacados, some berries, maybe a mango, young coconut..pomegranite, apples, pears, durian, tomatoes..whatever just alot of fruits then some greens..alot of them as well...and nuts and seeds. I also eat some miso, always organic and always unpasturized so the enzymes and living culture is still intact.

This diet is not cheap though. Produce is not cheap.

Google search Tony Wright and "left in the dark".

If you dont have any carbs you are doing your brain a disservice. Carbs are not the problem..I agree with you about white bread and pasta etc..but not when it comes to fruits. Fruits are and always have been a large part if not the main part of the primate diet. I very literally healed my body when it was on the brink of destruction with tons and tons of raw fruits and greens. You also dont see people who just eat loads of fruit, without breads and grains etc with diabetes.

I know there is alot of talk about paleo diet these days..I have looked into it and there are numerous holes in the theory. There is alot more to support the idea that we evolved as maily fruitarians in tropic forests..to understand why study Tony Wrights work.

The diet listed above would never work for me. Fruits are my main source of food and I eat tons and tons of them..alot of sweet fruit also..I was once afraid of sugar as well and avoided fruit..it did not really make anything any better though. Once I began to do more and more research I changed my mind about fruit and never looked back. If that diet works for you though then I guess it works for you.

Edit..NM I see you talk about fruit in it's own section..alot of people do tend to have this fruit phobia though and lump it together with other refined carbs..glad to see some people not doing that sort of thing.

my best tips are to have dried fruit and nuts lying around at all times just to graze on. also if you're dehydrated you dont take the good of what you eat in, so simply drinking more water can so so much for you! also avoid overcooking veg, just lightly fry it or better- steam it

my question, being vegan, is does anyone have tips for putting on weight besides protein?

Yeah..get on tons of raw fruits and veggies. Amino acids are what you need to build muscle...not the protein that you get from meat or supplements as many people believe..that sort of protein in just the middle man that must be broken down in the body into other amino acids like the ones found in large ammounts in raw fruits. They have to be raw or these enzymes will be destroyed. "vegan" is a sort of ambiguous term when it comes down to dietary specifics. Not all vegans eat healthy at all or eat a diet that will support putting on alot of muscle. You wont put on extra fat though so while you might have muscles you prob wont be huge..I dont think that is normal or natural anyway and you have to concider how your body is built anyway, if you have the bone structure for being that big etc..

I have talked to alot of people who feel this need to put on weight and when I look a them I tend to wonder why they think their bodies would be healthy with more wieght.

Like stated above there are many fruitarian body builders that have big muscles.

cool man thanks for the tips, raw fruit it is!. the main reason i want to put on more weight i to be able to store more energy, i party hard and run out of energy quick. that and iv always repped a skeletal look that i wouldnt mind ditching

your going to have to eat alot of raw fruits to feel full..dont just eat one thing..eat until you are seriousily not hungry anymore..and also it is important to get lots of dark leafy green as well..kale is a good one. I think alot of people try to eat more fruit and less other things, but they dont realize how much raw fruit/veggies you can actaully eat..if you are feeling like you are hungry and eating like some rabbit, then you are not eating enough. I will sit down with bowls of fruit and gigantic salads and then eat again like an hour later.

Dont be afraid of healthy fats either..raw nuts and seeds, coconuts and avacados..durian is a very fatty fruit as well if you can handle it..I love it but many people hate durian.

My 2CE

Hemp seeds - has an almost complete amino acid profile (compared to other sources of proteins such as meat, milk, eggs and soy) also chock full of essentail fatty acids - things like your omega 3's and 6's. They taste GREAT - an essential addition to my morning muesli.

I've been following a healthy diet for a few months now since becoming vegan (what an amazingly satisfying decision that was), still learning loads of new things everyday and the food is so much more rewarding. It has really made me pay attention to not only what I eat but to the effect it has on my mind and body.

follow the above advice, although be advised and encouraged; You need to learn a new life skill -- cooking for yourself. If you apply the conscience you've displayed to learning this, your going on a journey of improved health. So get some cookbooks.

Changing from my old diet filled of processed foods, refined sugars, red meat, milk, soda pop, garbage, ect, to one of mainly raw fruits, nuts, and vegetables has had a monumental impact on my health. like fractal, Tony Wrights research in his book Left In The Dark has impacted my thinking a lot

My mood did a complete 180, i have WAY more energy, feel more vibrant and connected, and i no longer get sick often like i used to.. I'm also as sensitive as ever to psychedelics, and although the daily rue/caapi microdosing has probably had something to do with this, there are tons of flavonoids in fruit and these have mao inhibiting properties as well.

With all the junk in our food nowadays, and the amount of diseases that are connected to it, eating better food is one of the most important things you can do IMO..I remember some study by katherine milton on primate nutrition that suggests we have lost more than 95% of the complex plant nutrients that fueled our development as human beings, and its probably more like 98% in many people.. I mean the daily recommendation in the US for Vitamin C is like 50mg, and our ancestors (along with our closest relatives today) probably got more than 5000mg a day..VitC is very important, but that's just one chemical out of thousands and thousand that was flooding our brains for millions of years. Its also pretty rare that a species doesn't have the enzymes necessary to synthesize internally its own vitamin c..those that don't make their own are getting tons from outside plant sources. If we evolved eating meat everyday we would definitely not need to synthesize our own Vitamin d from sunlight, and would definitely have our own endogenous VitC production..and yet the opposite is the case.

I don't have a problem with people who eat meat.. i don't think the hormone pumped stuff that most people eat today can be really called meat. I also don't think its any coincidence that our immune system floods our digestive system with white blood cells as if its under attack when we eat cooked or processed food, but not when we eat raw plants/nuts (see digestive leukocytosis)

There seems to be a connection between fruit eating species and intelligence..there's primates..and fruit bats and parrots have a wayy larger brain/body ratio than their relatives that don't eat fruit like them..Howler monkeys and spider monkeys live in the same environment, eat plants, are about the same size and weight, and yet spider monkeys brains are twice the size of howlers'..a spider monkeys diet is like 70% fruit whereas the howlers is more like 40%.. anyways i could go on and on but ill stop ranting

Whilst a natural healthy balanced diet is important for health, so is regular exercise and good rest. You need all 3 or the others cannot be maintained.
If you don't exercise it's very hard to eat healthily, and if you don't sleep it's very hard to exercise, and if you don't eat healthy it's hard to exercise to help you sleep to help you exercise to help you get the most out of your diet...

While agree that the idea that fruit sugar is bad is point not very supported by true research, there is alot to say about strarchy sugars and grains, refined carbs etc..the sugar in whole fruit for one is absorbed differenty by the body due to fiber etc..and like I said, the brain is fueled by glucose..trying to say all sugar is bad for you is a sort of misunderstanding or extreme generalization of the issue..A perfect example is our closest relatives-primates..if the sugars in fruits really caused these problem then why dont you see bonobos in the wild who eat tropical sweet fruits all day with the same problems. I should mention right now that I personally believe that, back in our primate hisory when we evolved such complex nervous systems we did not eat meat. There is ALOT of evidence to back this up. While we have indeed been meat eaters for thousands of years now, we just dont biologically fit the profile..it took a long time for me to finally accept this idea with all the stuff about us living on the plains eating meat as we evolved etc..but none of it holds up comparativly IMO..so if we arent meant to have these sweet fruits(which so many tropical fruits are) than something does not add up and you will have to find a way to explain the other primates.

The misunderstanding is that I mean Table Sugar, when I say sugar, as well as the other similar forms of it. I don't mean that all forms of the chemical compounds of dextrose, glucose, and fructose are evil. We need glucose for our brains, obviously we can't eradicate all sugars. I should have been more clear with what I meant by "sugar". Does that clear things up?