The Lifestyle you select, is one of the single most important decisions you will ever make, far more weighty than merely choosing between different types of blenders and juicers. That which you consume through eating and drinking, is absolutely vital for optimum and sustainable health.

I have personally experienced the devastating results of making the wrong dietary and life style choices, and within 3 years (after?) I experienced a gradual, yet consistent health collapse. I was in serious trouble. In retrospect, I could have spared myself untold discomfort and pain, not to mention vast expenses and time spent recovering. The golden rule is, prevention is always better than cure!

The purpose of this page is to help you make wise and informed lifestyle decisions. I encourage the reader to gradually grow into a wisely selected lifestyle, as opposed to rushing into the first best looking (at least on the surface) alternative life style presented to you.

Because I’ve learned the hard way, and wish to spare the reader the same agony, I’ve purposely dedicated a whole chapter in my book GO NATURAL Wisdom for Healthy Living to this crucial topic.

My plea with you is to take the time and make the effort, when making this vital decision. Take the time to research all the available options, and carefully weigh the pros and cons. A good start is to examine the diet and lifestyle of those who lived before us, before industrialization and its devastating effects on plain, simple, natural living.

According to me, one of the pioneers, foremost authorities and custodians in human nutrition and wellness, would be Dr Western A Price. During the 1930’s through to the 1939, Dr Price travelled to hundreds of cities and destinations in a total of 14 different countries in his search ‘to find healthy people’. In the process, he visited some of the most remote people groups in the world. As a dentist he had special concern for and interest in dental and facial development and health. Dr Price observed perfect dental arches, minimal tooth decay, high immunity and overall excellent health in those remote people groups who ate their ancestral indigenous foods. He found that when these people groups were introduced to modernized foods, such as refined white flour, white sugar, refined vegetable oil, and canned goods, signs of degeneration rapidly became evident, even in that same generation. Exposure to these modernised and processed foods caused dental caries, deformed jaw structures, crooked teeth, weight gain, arthritis, a low immunity and an ever growing list of new modern ‘dis-ease’ conditions.

“Our quest has been for information relative to the health of the body, the perfection of the teeth, and the normality of development of faces and dental arches, in order that we might through an analysis of the foods learn the secret of such splendid body building and learn from the people of the valley how the nutrition of all the groups of people may be reinforced, so that they, too, may be free from mankind’s most universal disease, tooth decay and its squelae. These studies included not only the making of physical examination of the teeth, the photographing of objects, the recording of voluminous data, the obtaining of sample food for chemical analysis, the collecting of detailed information regarding daily menus; but also the collecting of samples of saliva for chemical analysis.” p 26, NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL DEGENERATION, Dr Weston A Price.

Dr Price observed that in all 14 countries the traditional people groups all consumed animal products and animal fats. I had the privilege to read and study his work and it set me completely free from a whole list of lifestyle fallacies and pitfalls. In order to adequately summarizes Dr Price’s monumental work in terms of lifestyle selection, I will quote from his own works:

“It is significant that I have as yet found no group that was building and maintaining good bodies exclusively on plant foods. A number of groups are endeavouring to do so with marked evidence of failure.” p 253,

For more info about Dr Price’s work his book NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL DEGENERATION, is a MUST have for every household interested in healthy living. To further explore his findings and research, visit his legacy that he has left us at www.ppnf.org.

Below are some of the photo’s Dr Price took during the time of his research, clearly indicating that tooth decay is a nutritional injury caused by an improper and nutrient deficient lifestyle.

We, as human beings, are far superior to the animal kingdom, in complexity and intricacy, the crown of (God’s) creation, thus our nutritional needs and requirements are greater than the animal kingdom. For example, a cow’s design and systems, do not require nearly the same advanced set of building blocks or food sources we require. For a cow, grass is sufficient as staple food. Their system is designed as such. We can rightly say they only need simple foods.

We all know how diverse the animal kingdom and food chain is. Some species eat only fruits and plants, some, like carnivores, eat only meats, while many animals and ape species are omnivores. Many of the primates are plant eaters but they also hunt smaller animal species or other creatures and thus also meat eating. Us humans, on the other hand, enjoy virtually the full spectrum of food available. We as humans need a much more complex and balanced set of building blocks to keep us optimally nourished and healthy.
The human race developed means and methods to survive in the harshest of environments, from the desert people, to the tropics, to the cold northern European climates and even the Eskimo’s. All these different societies ate mainly fresh, organic whole food with no processed and preserved foods, only God’s designed foods, without interference from man. As one would expect, these people were not plagued with all the modern ‘dis-eases’ we face today.

There are so many lifestyle suggestions out there and people become confused in selecting the correct lifestyle with its accompanying health fundamentals. In our social environment we as humans observe a plethora of sicknesses and ‘dis-eases’ as never experienced around us and we recognize a great need for a health intervention of some sort. But there are too many different lifestyle ideologies. Most people are completely confused. Our attitude has become one of ‘quick fix’ and the tendency, for example, is to blame meat as the culprit. The modern and popular rationale has in fact become, one of excluding animal products, and introducing only plant based foods, resulting in an ever increasing and popular vegan lifestyle and vegetarianism.

I was in fact very confused, having left South Africa as a raw vegan, when I arrived in Australia for treatment at Living Valley Springs (LVS): One of the first recommendations by the naturopath’s at LVS, was that I reintroduce animal products into my diet, i.e. eggs, meat, soft cheeses and butter. This came as a big surprise, since the literature I had been exposed to up to that point, said exactly the opposite. My initial lifestyle change, which involved the Hallelujah Diet, strictly avoided meat as ‘not good’ and required that I eat “nothing with a face on” –i.e. no meat. Because of the initial health benefits experienced on this lifestyle, I was convinced that meat is a culprit and bad food source. I advocated a message, that initially yielded good results, but the long term results were catastrophic. Today I know it was an unwise, uninformed and biased decision.

As a vegan and completely committed to clean and pure plant foods, one must be fair in one’s observation. Parallel to stop eating meat I also stopped consuming all processed and preserved foods, nothing in a box, elimination of all ‘quick-fix’ meals, no unnatural man made sweets, no processed white flour products, no sugar and I ate mainly fresh raw fruits, seeds, nuts, pulses, grains and vegetables, with freshly squeezed vegetable juice once a day.

Today I am convinced that it was not the clean, pure meats that made me sick, instead it was all the empty, toxic, processed, refined and chemically preserved foods. I was ignorant however, and it took the staff at LVS more than a week to convince me to eat animal protein and products (butter, soft cheeses, and eggs) again. They did not serve lamb, but suggested that I include it in my diet as well.

I have learnt and experienced that the pure hunter gatherer lifestyle is the only way to live disease free and maintain good health.
But what exactly is pure? Find out exactly what constitutes a pure, natural lifestyle, in my book, Go Natural – Wisdom for Healthy Living.