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Getting your “Five-a-day?” Congratulations! But you’re probably still deficient.

September 18, 2012

Around the world, health professionals are unified in promoting the consumption of fruits and vegetables. In Canada, we optimistically suggest that everyone should be getting “ 5 to 10 a day “, while in the US (as well as the UK, Germany, and others), the slogan is simply “5 a Day”.

The problem is, “5 a Day” simply isn’t good enough anymore. It might have been in the 1950s, but in today’s world we would have to consume significantly more than that in order to be optimally healthy. In fact, I’m not sure that the majority of us can do it with food alone. And the reason for this is twofold: food today isn’t as nutritious, and our nutrient needs are far higher than they used to be.

Today’s food just doesn’t cut it.

Every so often, Health Canada tests fruits and vegetables in Canada and provides tables listing their nutrient content. When you see a product label indicating the percentage of Vitamin C, iron, calcium etc. per serving, those values are calculated by plugging the recipe into a computer program which uses the data supplied by Health Canada. (Individual companies are not sending their food to be independently tested by labs, so having this data is important.)

Last week I discovered an article from the Globe and Mail published on July 6, 2002, ( ten years ago! ) by Andre Picard comparing the nutritional values, as provided by Health Canada, of 25 different fruits and vegetables between 1951 and 1999. The following is a sampling of what they found:

Everywhere you see red, the nutritional value has gone down…and that’s a lot of red! As you can see, the levels of vitamins and minerals in all of the foods they looked at have almost universally deteriorated, a lot . Take potatoes, for example, since it’s probably the most consumed vegetable in North America. The amount of calcium has gone down by 27.5%; the amount of Vitamin C, iron, and riboflavin have each gone down over 50%, and the Vitamin A in potatoes is completely gone…there used to be Vitamin A in potatoes, and now there is none! For the 25 most popular fruits and vegetables that were examined, nutrient losses were similar.

To put this into perspective, back in 1951, a woman could get her full Recommended Daily Allowance of Vitamin A by consuming just 2 peaches . Today, she would need fifty-three (53) peaches! Or how about the fact that you would have to eat eight oranges today to get the same amount of Vitamin A in just one orange in 1951.

Canada’s situation is not unique. According to data in the US and the UK, similar losses have been tracked in their food supply as well.

The first question to be asked is: why is this happening?  The most obvious reason has to do with mass-farming practices on the one hand, and the degradation of nutrients during long-haul transportation on the other. Historically, food was sourced locally and farming involved regular crop rotation, allowing land to lie fallow, and other techniques to ensure that the soil remained healthy, and in turn, so would the crops that grew on them. Millions of dollars have been spent on increasing profits through modern technology: fertilizers and chemicals to put out higher crop yields which are more resistant to pests and droughts, and which look beautiful to the eye. Where is the money ensuring that nutrient value has not been shortchanged as a result? Call me a cynic, but I’m not surprised.

The second question to ask is: what is being done about this? The answer: nothing. The only thing more shocking to me than the sheer magnitude of the nutrient losses is the fact that public health officials have known about this problem for decades and they don’t seem to see it as a problem worth addressing. This problem is not even on the radar! At the very least I would have expected Dietitians of Canada to make some sort of stand on food quality in Canada, given that our discipline’s raison d’etre is to promote healthy living through good nutrition. How can you meet your nutrient needs through food if the food doesn’t contain the nutrients in the first place? I’ve never had one communication from them addressing this issue.

So why is there no public outcry? The answer is that, despite the drastic decreases to nutritional values, our food is still good enough, if we eat very carefully, to (barely) supply our RDAs.

RDAs: Recommended Dietary Allowances

And that’s the problem. The RDA’s are defined as “the average daily dietary intake of a nutrient that is sufficient to meet the requirement of nearly all (97-98%) healthy persons.” We label our foods with %Daily Values (determined by picking the highest RDA value across demographic groups for the nutrient). The recommendations in Canada’s Food Guide (and the US MyPlate) have been developed in order to meet RDA values.  We’ve convinced ourselves that if we meet our RDAs, we’re doing what is needed to keep ourselves healthy. But we’ve forgotten our history. What does “meet the requirement” mean?

The RDAs were originally developed during World War II in order to determine what minimal nutrient intake was necessary to keep our servicemen and women up and fighting during periods of rationing . As in, how much Vitamin C do you need to prevent scurvy? Or how much thiamin to prevent beriberi? Or the amount of Vitamin D needed to prevent rickets? We’re not talking about optimal nutrition here. These are the levels known as adequate to avoid overt nutritional deficiencies , but they in no way give us the amounts needed to prevent long-term chronic disease. As an analogy, it’s like asking what’s the minimum amount of air I can put in my tires to keep my car moving? Having anything less than the optimal amount of air yields more wear and tear on the car, reduces its efficiency, and shortens its life overall. Having less than optimal nutrition does exactly the same thing to your body.

As I pointed out earlier, in 1951 it was extremely easy to meet your RDAs. A couple pieces of fruit and a few vegetables, each of which was chock-full of a wide spectrum of nutrients, and you were there. In fact, you’d be taking in far more nutrition than simply meeting your RDA values. In 1951 it was easy to be optimally nourished with food alone.

The RDAs have been updated every decade, and most nutrient levels have only changed slightly over the past 50 years. Where the evidence has strongly indicated a role in disease prevention (eg. Calcium & osteoporosis, Vitamin D & cancer), recommendations have increased. Surprisingly, most of the other nutrient recommendations have gone down!

If the history isn’t convincing enough, the RDA book itself states “RDAs are neither minimal requirements nor necessarily optimal levels of intake. It is not possible at this time to establish optima.” It’s in black and white, yet somehow we refuse to recognize that there is a difference between minimal and optimal.

Optimal has changed

Modern society is worlds different from the 1950s. Stresses to our bodies are increasing constantly: not only the go-go-go of today’s lifestyles, but also things such as lack of sleep; air pollution; noise pollution; the chemicals and toxins that surround us in our foods, cleaning products, beauty products, paints, glues, light bulbs etc. The list goes on. All of this affects us. Even if we’re not eating it directly, we breathe it in, and it absorbs through our skin. Our bodies defend ourselves with our immune system, our liver, our digestive systems, our skin, our tear ducts, our nose hair and so on. Those only work and regenerate if they are properly nourished and hydrated. The more stress, the more work they have to do, and the greater our nutritional needs to keep at full fighting strength.

Bridging the gap

“We are living to short and dying too long” – Dr. Myron Wentz. As a society, we’ve become very good at taking care of infectious diseases. Immunizations, antibiotics and antivirals are amazing at keeping us free from the multitude of diseases that brought down our grandparents and great-grandparents. Now, however, we are seeing an unprecedented rise in chronic degenerative diseases. The diseases that rob you of life; that kill you slowly, over years or decades. Cancers, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and so on. These are diseases that start off with oxidative damage to individual cells. Damage that could potentially be prevented or reversed with proper nutrition: antioxidants, vitamins and minerals whose function it is to protect each and every cell in the body.

Can we prevent these diseases with food today? I don’t think so. Not the majority of us, anyway, who can’t seem to get even 5 fruits and vegetables in daily; and those five just barely keep us from becoming visibly deficient. Not with the amount of processed food in our diet, whose nutrients have been stripped away and replaced with fat, sugar, and salt.

The way I see it, we have two choices, and one imperative. We can overhaul our diets to eliminate the processed food, so we can maximize the nutrients that we can get from our diets. We can do the best we can, and take a high-quality nutritional supplement as insurance. (I’ve written a couple of blog posts on this subject previously to help choose a good product) And we must demand better from our public health professionals and ultimately the government to see that something is being done about this. The problem is not irreversible, we just need to take action.

I’d be very interested to hear your comments. Are you as shocked as I was? Do you see any other ways to solve this problem? (we can’t all grow veggie gardens in our back yards, sadly). What are your thoughts?

How we healed her Insomnia

By Renu Arora • January 23, 2025
So she could finally get a good night's sleep

The voices in your head aren't you

By Renu Arora • August 30, 2024
The voices in your head aren't you. I was in the middle of doing prep work for completely overhauling my ART training over the next month and I realized that the above was something that I understood from the thousand(s?) of sessions I have done, but have never put into words. The voices in your head are not you. There is only one YOU in your head. That's the one THINKING. Asking questions. Making decisions. The one who knows what you want and don't want. So, who is calling you names? Making nasty comments? Saying things that you know aren't true? Or aren't how you really feel? I refer to these chatterboxes in your head collectively as "the peanut gallery." They fall into one of 3 categories. Something that was a part of you, but split off and is no longer "attached". Something that was never part of your energy. Or it's your inner child. If it's your inner child, that is the childlike part in every one of us that keeps us young, and they need some soothing. We all live with a younger version of ourselves inside. But this younger version has it's own needs and wants, and you have to learn to work together to live harmoniously! If it was never a part of you, it's some kind of energetic interference. Someone else - whether living or dead - is invading your space. It could even be your spirit guides themselves, believing that they are protecting you with that belief, or they themselves need healing and they are imposing their beliefs upon you. Most of the time, we just take the few moments we need to heal them so they no longer feel it necessary to interfere. And then there are the ones that were once a part of you. These are typically referred to as Alters. These were formed out of trauma. As a result of a traumatic experience, the body coped by splitting off the trauma into a separate segment in an attempt to "contain" it. These segments have their own consciousness and belief system...therefore they no longer truly represent YOU. People with dissociative identity disorder (DID. Formerly called multiple personality disorder) have Alters that are so imbued with trauma energy that they can occasionally "take the drivers seat" and during those times, "You" are relegated to the background. As such, people with DID will often have large gaps in their memory when an Alter had taken over. The wild thing is, everyone has Alters. It's only in DID that the trauma is so overwhelming for an Alter to be able to take control. You can speak to Alters. Find out what they need in order to heal. Once they are healed, they can integrate back into the whole. (ie. become part of you once again) And once you address all of the "personalities" that have appeared, the peanut gallery finally becomes quiet. For this week's story, while I was working with a client she suddenly shared that she felt like people want what she has, and wanted her to suffer...while all she wanted was peace. Her subconscious told me that that feeling wasn't the one we were supposed to work on, though. That that was actually symbolic of something else in her life...somewhere else that there was suffering and she wanted peace. She then told me "there's a part of me that wants to die." She clearly hears it say "I want to die." We both know that's not what she really wants. It's a voice in her head. In moments, I discover it's an Alter. This Alter was suffering and wanted peace. This is what we were being directed to heal. Once they are discovered, healing an Alter is actually rather straightforward and simple. So within a few minutes, the peanut gallery was quiet. She no longer needs to hear those words in her head again. What a relief! If you find this as fascinating as I do, then consider learning ART! There is a 5-week, live training course with me (conducted over zoom) and a couple of smaller prerequisite courses. You can find all the information about when the various courses are offered and their pricings by clicking here . You will be amazed by what you learn!

How long does energy healing take to work?

By Renu Arora • June 30, 2024
Your subconscious knows exactly how long it will take you to heal.

Losing your connection (spiritually speaking!)

By Renu Arora • January 24, 2024
This is a short one... A client came in for her first session with me, and as I typically do for an intro session, we planned to find and heal a life event for her. This generally starts off with us needing to find out a belief that the client is hanging onto as a result of the experience. I got my clues, but none of it meant anything to my client. I checked into see if we were being blocked, and I didn't see any issues, but still no spark of insight came to her. Worse yet, nothing was coming to me either. I usually get an intuitive hit to guide the conversation but this time, nada. Then it occurred to me to ask if she and I were still connected. I got a "no." No?? I tried again to connect and found, in a nutshell, that her spirit guides had booted me out! It sometimes happens that I can't connect initially, but I don't generally get kicked out mid-session like that. So I asked what her guides needed to allow us to move forward and it turns out that they needed an apology from me! I can only guess that I ticked them off in a past life. 😕 I apologized. Thankfully they accepted. And I quickly found that the information that I had received earlier had been completely false and we had to start from scratch. Happily, they didn't interfere again and my client and I went on to have a great session. 😃 Today's tip: if you are doing your own healing work and you find your intuition shut down, verify that you are actually connected! And don't be surprised if somebody's grudge from a past life comes up to be resolved. :) If you are interested in learning more about whether ART is right for you, either to learn for yourself, or to experience as a client, book a discovery call with me and let's chat!

Sometimes your emotions aren't your own

By Renu Arora • December 31, 2023
Before the year ends, I've got one last story to share for 2023. Today's client reached out to do a session with me because she felt that something was amiss and her intuition told her that I could help. She was finding herself unusually angry with her husband. She's not by nature an angry person so this unnatural rage bubbling up whenever she would see or even think about him was especially disconcerting. Connected to her anger, she also had this strange feeling that he himself was feeling distant and resentful towards her. To be honest, it was a confusing session. I didn't really know where we were going with it, but I always maintain trust in the subconscious and that it knows more than I do - and that everything would make sense by the end. I was not disappointed! My client and I reasoned that since she was feeling his resentment, it made sense that he was the one needing the healing. So, I tapped into his energy and immediately found a huge cluster of trapped emotions and beliefs - disgust, a lack of control, a belief that he couldn't be happy, that his happiness was dependent on others, not being good enough, and more. We cleared all of that after which she sensed an improvement in the resentment, but not yet to the feeling of him being distant. Add to that, she was also now feeling a lack of love, and not being wanted. Even more new, unusual emotions for her. So we kept going. With a little more digging, all of the pieces started falling into place. It turns out that she and her husband have a beautiful daughter whom they adore, but needed medical intervention to conceive. My client knew she was destined to have another child - she had heard this child communicate with her before, during previous sessions with me and at other times, too. Recently she had broached the subject with her husband about starting the process again for this second child and he had not shown any interest. That's when it all clicked. NONE of the emotions my client had been experiencing were her own. The anger, resentment, disconnect, lack of love or anything else...those all belonged to not-yet-even-conceived Baby #2! All the emotions and beliefs we had healed...those belonged to the baby as well! It made so much sense! This baby was aching to join the family, but dad's lack of interest led to feelings of rejection, anger, and sadness. Wow! No wonder my client was so confused as to what to do. The emotions were so foreign to her, not at all how she usually responds to disappointment, and now we understood why! Shortly after that, a wave of sleepiness hit my client, always signal of a message from someone trying to come through: very clearly, she heard the words "Bring me home now" in her head. Baby #2 was no longer angry or hurt, just insistent that it was their time to make an appearance. And with that, my client felt totally better - back to her old self once again. We could both see a visible change in her face - she was smiling from ear to ear. And ready to pass along the message to her husband. 😀 Do you feel like you are behaving out of character? Sometimes your emotions are not your own! Whether they are yours or not, they can be healed so you can feel back to normal once again. Book a session with me and I can help! Happy New Year! See you in 2024!

The meaning in her migraines

By Renu Arora • December 22, 2023
One of my clients came to me to address, amongst other things, migraine headaches. She would get them regularly, requiring daily medication which, when working properly, would mean she would have fewer episodes and (hopefully!) less severe ones. Until working with me, she never felt like her head was ever fully pain free. If you have never had a migraine, or known anyone who has suffered from them, then to put it simply, a migraine is an extremely intense headache, which for most sufferers, can be debilitating. In addition to throbbing pain, they may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound that can last from hours to days. Many migraine sufferers are forced to sequester themselves alone in a dark, quiet room until the symptoms subside. After a bit of work, her subconscious lead us to one key experience in her childhood. It was in grade 5, when she was newly designated as "enhanced" at school. That change meant that she was suddenly required to be taken out of her regular classes to participate in extra programming with the other enhanced kids. And she hated it! She was being pulled away from her friends and being given extra work to do, to boot! Yuck! Are you ready to play detective...what do you think the connection is? That kid was angry. The injustice of it all! Teachers, parents...the whole system seemed to be forcing her to do something she had absolutely no interest in. Deep inside her, there was an inner child screaming to the world "will everyone just leave me alone?!?" What happens when someone gets a migraine? The whole world has to leave them alone! It took giving her a lot of pain to get it, but that inner child eventually got what she was asking for. Crazy, eh? It's actually more common than you think. Once that was understood, our next task was to heal that child so it could stop being so angry and upset. And shortly after that, my client's head stopped hurting. That little bit of pain that she always felt, was gone . Her subconscious no longer had a purpose for her migraines, so it was time to let them go. If you suffer from migraines or know anyone who does, book a session with me so we can make them a thing of the past. 

The Cause of her Self-Sabotage

By Renu Arora • December 14, 2023
If you find yourself holding yourself back on doing something, you are absolutely not alone! It is one of the most common things that I see, but it is often one of the more devastating. To know that you have a gift to share with the world, to want to do it and know that you should, but to feel this invisible resistance keeping you from your dreams...it is heartbreaking! It invariably leads to us questioning ourselves, wondering "What is wrong with me?" It's just another case of your subconscious trying to tell you that you've got something from your past that needs to be healed. That was the situation for my client in this week's story. My client in question is a fellow alternative health practitioner. She had an event coming up and was afraid that people wouldn't sign up. I could see her whole heart wasn't into it. She was doubting herself. But it was bigger than the one event. It turned out that the emotions she was feeling surrounding the event could be found in other places in her life as well. She had to admit that she wasn't 100% certain that her husband was fully on board with her work. And quite frankly, part of her doubted herself and whether her work was as effective as she thought. (A sentiment I could absolutely relate to from the early years in my practice.) We discovered that she had the phrase "Am I ridiculous?" anchored into her subconscious. It took us some work, but eventually the memory surfaced that when she wanted to go to university, her parents didn't approve of her desire to go into music therapy, and they made it very clear that they thought she ought to do something else. This made her question her own judgement, and the thought "Am I ridiculous?" anchored in. Together we shifted that belief and integrated the phrase "I do amazing things and am loved for it!" in it's place. She ended the session with a new level of confidence and self-assurance. And the event? It went great! If you are an entrepreneur and you find yourself questioning your ability to be successful, book a session with me and we'll have you ready to take on the world in no time!

"Why don't I fit in?"

By Renu Arora • December 8, 2023
A client was struggling with feeling like she doesn't belong anywhere. She moved to Canada from Chile when she was young, and despite living here for so long, has never felt entirely at ease. But during trips to visit Chile, she would feel like an outsider there as well. We discovered that her subconscious was holding onto the belief "Why don't I fit in?" As long as that belief was programmed into her psyche, we knew she wouldn't feel at home no matter where she was. Together we determined that what she really wanted to believe was "I am comfortable anywhere". So where did her subconscious anchor in the belief "Why don't I fit in?". As it turns out, at the airport, on the day she arrived in Canada as a little girl, she and her family encountered something they had never seen before: an escalator. My client accidentally managed to get separated from her family and onto the escalator...and they all panicked! They were terrified that she was going to reach the end and get sucked into the machinery. Of course, the escalator monster didn't end up eating her, but it left her completely puzzled, asking herself "Why don't I fit in?"! She and I got a big chuckle out of this one! Once we healed the terror and embarrassment from the experience we were then able to release the negative belief and program in her new belief "I am comfortable anywhere". That is now her new truth. If there is a moral to the story, it is this: trauma is in the eye of the beholder. Even seemingly insignificant events can have a huge impact on our lives, because what would be meaningless to an adult can be terrifying for a child. So if you've got embarrassing or uncomfortable stories from your childhood, don't ignore them - they are probably impacting you in ways you would never expect.

The subconscious seldom reveals what you expect!

By Renu Arora • December 1, 2023
That was certainly the case with a recent client. In her first session with me, my client admitted that she has been struggling a lot lately, suffering with feelings of inadequacy, and imposter syndrome, which had been triggering her to engage in avoidance behaviour, including turning to internet surfing and television watching to cope. We quickly found that she was holding onto the belief "I'm not good enough." In my head, I thought, "well that would make sense...if she doesn't feel good enough to engage with the work she is meant to do, she would be drawn to procrastinate and do other things, like TV or internet." Where did the belief "I'm not good enough" come from? We tracked it to a time when she was younger and her older brother bullied her. Despite her telling her parents that he was mistreating her, they took no action, and the torment continued. To her, "I'm not good enough" really meant "I'm not good enough for my parents to care about me...I'm all on my own". This general problem came attached to a specific memory that came to mind, though. In this one, her brother "decided" that she would no longer be allowed to watch TV for a year. He put a sheet over her head to prevent her from viewing the TV, and would interfere in other ways anytime she would try. As always, her parents did not intervene, and this behaviour went on for some time. And then it hit us. She wasn't surfing the web and watching television because she was avoiding doing other work. She was watching it because the little girl inside her wanted to watch TV and was upset with her big brother for not letting her! My client's subconscious was communicating with her. That "desire to watch a screen" was meant to remind her of an earlier experience of when she had that same desire; it was trying to direct us to heal the abuse and neglect she experienced when she was young. By the time we were done healing the experience, my client said the thought alone of spending hours in front of a screen made her nauseous - she had no desire to do it. She even wrote me later and told me that she had no craving to spend time on the internet or TV, and instead her evening was "pleasantly filled with other joyful stuff." Yay! Do you know anyone who is addicted to their screens? If they would like to get hours of their life back doing meaningful activities that would bring them more joy, let them know I can help and suggest they book a session today.

Can't drink milk? You probably have mother issues

By Renu Arora • April 25, 2022
Everything we react to, whether it's foods, things in the environment, people...whatever...the reaction is there for a reason . Your subconscious is communicating with you. Let's take lactose for example. Some people (okay, most of them) will say that lactose intolerance exists "because the body has stopped producing the enzyme that digests lactose". (I was a registered dietitian for 12 years, so that was exactly what I believed, and didn't think twice about it.) But have they ever asked themselves why the body stopped producing lactase (that's the enzyme). Like, did the person's DNA change? And all of a sudden, this one protein is unavailable for production? Or did the production system change (and miraculously only this one single protein was affected?) I was never, ever, provided with a satisfactory reason for why the body couldn't do it's job anymore. "It just stopped" is a description, not a reason . So let's look at the symbolism of lactose. Lactose is found in only one place: milk. Milk has only once source: mothers . To the subconscious, milk (lactose) represents mothers. Let me give you a real-life example. I met with a new friend for a get-to-know-you coffee date. Without any prompting from me, he told me exactly what his subconscious had been trying to tell him for 30 years, in under 30 minutes. As we were settling in and he was adding cream to his coffee, he casually mentioned to me how until recently he used to be unable to tolerate any amount of dairy for years. He used to love milk as a kid, but sometime after university, milk stopped loving him and even the littlest bit would have him running to the bathroom. Over the last few years, however, he started to be able to tolerate more and more, so now he can have the cream in his coffee or a slice of pizza without digestive discomfort. So far, so good. Then we started talking about our families. He was pleased to let me know that his youngest of three kids had just graduated from university and admitted to a sense of relief that his mother had been able to see all of them graduate. He went on to tell me that when he himself graduated from university he didn't want to go to his convocation ceremony, so he neglected to tell his mother about it. She was devastated! She had very much wanted to see her son's graduation and so he had felt guilty about it for all these years. Now that she was able to see her three grandkids in their caps and gowns, he didn't feel quite so bad. Bingo! My friend's reaction to dairy was directly related to the level of guilt he felt towards his mother. So, if you have an issue with milk, there's an exceptionally good chance that you've either got an issue with your own mother, or a maternal figure in your life, or the concept of motherhood. I've seen it over and over. Heal the issue with mom, and you can say hello to ice cream again. :) Do you have your own allergy or intolerance you'd like to get rid of? Book a session with me and we can make that problem history!
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