This author went to a dermatologist several weeks ago who complemented him about how young he looked and that he was in good health. The author was surprised when the doctor even asked him what he ate; most other doctors do not. Many of my friends and relatives in the past 10 years have asked me what do I eat to live to almost 91 years [ 93 years old in 2021]. I have decided to share what I eat and why I eat certain foods.

It is important to point out that in addition to eating a good diet, my lifestyle and possibly genetics may collectively contribute to my good health and longevity. But I focus on diet and lifestyle in this report.

"Man does not live by bread alone!" The human body and food digestion also need movement. It is exercise that contracts the muscles surrounding the lymphatic vessels that moves the toxins in the lymphatic vessels out of the body and activates our detox system. For exercise, I swim, crawl stroke, 10 laps, three times a week. Walking and running are good exercise but I do a minimum of walking as my right hip-joint is broken. I enjoy being able to walk without a cane, but I am always on the alert not to lose my balance. I walk slowly and avoid any sudden movements. My blood pressure averages around 128/70mg, am 5 foot 9 inches tall and weigh 173 pounds.

I have been a vegetarian for about 30 years; no meat; but I do occasionally eat a little Guda cheese. My diet is fresh, raw green vegetables, fresh raw fruits, seeds and cooked beans. I eat a small breakfast, main meal about 3 - 4 pm, including nuts and fruit. I feel good many hours after eating. But I did not have a standardized diet five years ago. I decided on it by experimenting on myself.

Why is a standardized diet important? Day in and day out, my diet is standardized; that is, I try to eat the same food each day. I decided to standardize my diet so that I could, in turn, keep my colon bacteria at a constant level. The food I eat feeds two entities, my physical body and the bacteria in the colon. The recommended scientific amount of good bacteria in the colon should be about 80% good bacteria and 20% bad bacteria. This balance is essential for good health, immunity and preventing chronic diseases. It is very difficult to maintain such a bacteria balance in the colon and this diet requires a lot discipline.

I can monitor this 80%:20 % balance by listening to my body. I can tell when the balance of colon bacteria has been disrupted and out of balance by the status of my bowel movement. When I have a difficult bowel movement and I am constipated, it is usually from eating too much sweet addicted food and processed or junk foods. My addiction is to sweet deserts and I have to avoid these. On the other hand, a soft bowl movement is a signal from my body that I am eating well and feeding mostly the good bacteria. Such body signals are immediate within 24 hours. Bad foods in the colon also have bacteria respond by creating an excess of flatulence [gas], feeling bad, bloating and abdominal swelling. This is the best instant scientific feedback from my body. [ Everybody has this built in body feedback ]. It is better evidence than medical lab tests that the body is working, giving continuous feedback 24/7 about good or bad diet.

How to standardize a diet: The way to stabilize the balance of good and bad bacteria is to eat a stable diet most of the time so that the good bacteria can become the dominant 80% colony. One needs to constantly keep a high level of good bacteria in the colon. Eating a variety of foods as recommended by dieticians is good but only for mixing and alternating your vegetables, fruits, nuts and protein source. For example, I do occasionally substitute cauliflower for broccoli, spinach leaves for dark green romaine lettuce but not iceberg lettuce; and oranges for grapes, peaches, plums and so on. Seeds are mostly almonds, walnuts, ground flax seeds and sunflower seeds. Unfortunately I also sometimes eat processed foods [flax and almond seeds] that are not fresh or cooked foods [like beans ] that may be devoid of some nutrients.

Bad bacteria are very aggressive and can easily overpower the weaker good bacteria; making it very difficult to restore bacteria balance in the colon. Once the balance is disrupted, it may take a month or longer to restore colon balance. Trying to inoculate the colon with new bacteria by ingesting probiotics may help, but this is not the best way of doing this. Instead, you need to start eating a constant, standard diet of fresh raw vegetables and fruit.

For most dieticians and street people, this would be enough information about a person's diet. But this is just the tip of the iceberg and it is totally incomplete. I did numerous nutrient analyses and also compared the nutrient serving amounts in good and bad foods so I could identify foods with the best nutrient sources [nutrient density] and make better food choices. I did this over 40 years ago and once again, more recently.

The nutrient analyses were compared to the old 1960's Recommended Daily Allowances [RDA, now Recommended Daily Index or RDI]. The RDI assumes that all the food that one eats will be digested and most nutrients will be absorbed into the blood steam and lymphatic system and circulated to all the hungry somatic cells of the body. But such absorption of nutrients from the digestive system is slowly breaking down as we get older. Although a healthy teenager with healthy digestive enzymes may be able to absorb 70 to 90% of the nutrients while secreting most digestive enzymes, a person by age 50, having lost some of the digestive enzymes, may be able to absorb only 50% and an elderly person, 80 + years, as most digestive enzymes decrease by this time,  would probably absorb only 10 or 20% of nutrients at best. Yes, this may look like guesswork, but it is what science tells us. So the original RDA is a flawed recommendation. If a person relies on the RDI to eat a balance of nutrients, then they would be very malnourished. And that is what is happening to most of the population today. Such malnourishment is fueling silent chronic diseases.

It is essential to be aware that the inept RDI is not a good monitor of your diet or potential health. Your body sends messages to your mind-brain after each meal and especially when you are not eating properly. How you ask? Well, for starters, you may feel tired, feel bad but not really sick, have frequent colds and flu, itchy skin, have indigestion, upset stomach and probably gaining weight. Perhaps you might be overweight and obese and not aware of it. Then there is depression and headaches. Worse of all, you may be incubating a silent disease for many years and your doctor and you may not know it. You also get a good feeling when eating a healthy diet.

I became aware of all these dietary misfortunes and have standardized [adjusted] my diet for better wellbeing.

Now you, the readers, are ready to look at my diet. These are the foods that are loaded with the best nutrient sources. I start the morning by mixing 1 gram of organic sulfur with a glass of water. Here are the standard foods that I eat each day, most of the time:

1. toast one slice
2. butter .5 pat
3. almond butter 2 teaspoons
4. bran muffin
5. lemon juice [1/2 lemon] in glass of water [vitamin C]
6. protein yeast flakes 1 tablespoon
7. fresh, raw dark green leaves spinach 2/3 cup
8. broccoli 2/3 cup
9. avocado 1/2 item
10. beets cooked 2/3 cup
11. carrot shredded 1 carrot 6 to 8 inches long
12. beans cooked 2/3 cup
13. sunflower seeds two tablespoons
14. balsamic vinegar salad dressing 2 tablespoons
15. almonds dry 6 - 10 seeds
16. brazil nuts 4 half pieces
17. water melon one cup [or fruit in season like 1 orange or 2/3 cup cherries/grapes/mango]
18. 5-6 cups water
19. Alternate ground flax seeds with 2 tablespoons for sunflower seeds
20. Alternate grilled Guda cheese sandwich for beans

Occasionally, I will substitute a Mexican dish of cheese enchilada, refried beans and rice for the above main meal or small cheese pizza. Sweets, alcoholic beverages and soft drinks are a no-no!

The list above does include dietary supplements below:

Supplements are a problem, as one never really knows whether these are absorbed and really helpful. The human body has its own instant diagnostic laboratory that screens or distinguishes between plant source nutrients and artificial chemically derived nutrients. Many if not most supplements are chemically derived, are recognized by the human body as toxins and not absorbed. But supplements made from plants are absorbed. We just do not know how much of a plant supplement is absorbed. Plant derived mineral supplements usually are paired with other minerals that have opposite functions in the body. For example, calcium contracts muscles while magnesium relaxes muscles. But such precise functionality is dependent on calcium and magnesium having an exact ratio balance like Ca:Mg ratio of 2:1 or 4:1. Which is best? We lack precise mineral ratios and this is unfortunately pure guesswork in supplements. But raw fresh foods have a natural mineral balance that is good for that plant.

Most persons have the idea that they can supplement with a single nutrient. But this is not how nutrients, food and the body work. Most foods may have a major nutrient but food also has other lesser amounts of nutrients know as co-factors or helpers that help absorption and digest the food. Food also has enzymes that help the food to be digested in the human body. Without co-factors, a single nutrient may not be absorbed nor used by the body.

The human body compensates for nutrient deficiencies in ways that helps us survive; ways that we do not fully understand. This makes it difficult to determine whether supplements really work. It is best to get nutrients by eating plant food. A little insight into supplements is in order:

Vitamin D-3 is not a vitamin, instead it is a hormone that is synthesized with the aid of sunlight. Most persons today live and work indoors, so lack of adequate amount of sunshine causes many to be deficient in vitamin D. The recommended vitamin D RDI dosage for an adult is 800 to 1000 International Units [IU] per day. This is grossly insufficient. I take between 2000 to 5000 IU each day and I live in 'sunny most of the year' San Diego; as I work indoors.

Most persons are aware that iodine is important to prevent goiter and it is assumed that we get plenty of iodine from the food we eat. But this assumption fails to recognize that the kind of iodine critically needed by all the rest of body cells is different from iodine needed by the thyroid gland. Most persons are deficient in cellular iodine. It is with this information that this author ingests Lugol's iodine solution about three times a week.

Spirulina Superfood is an ideal plant nutritional supplement that the body recognizes; spirulina has over 75 nutrients compared to multi-vitamin-mineral supplements that have 25 or fewer nutrients. It is natural plant food supplement.

Astaxanthin supplement and detoxification: Breathing oxygen all the time is needed to break down sugar for energy. In doing so, we are always releasing many waste products, one of which are free radicals that constantly bombard body cells. The body stops the constant bombardment of free radicals with antioxidants found in food. Antioxidants give free radicals an electron, thereby neutralizing and stabilizing the free radical. As long as there is a constant daily supply of astaxanthin [blueberries, ground flax seeds, vitamin C in fruit, carotinoids like carrots and dell] astaxanthin can regenerate itself and recycles continuously. Astaxanthin is the body's silent detoxification system.

There is a very good reason to eat more fresh vegetables and fruits. The most recent and important research about eating raw fresh food is that such plant food has vibrating light energy waves, referred to as photons. The photon content in food is of far greater importance than just the nutrient or caloric content of a food. When we eat fresh raw vegetables and fruit, the photons are transferred as light energy to the human body. When you eat fresh food, you also ingest photon light energy that manages the many body functions and makes you feel more energetic. Plants, that are full of photons or light energy, can restore order of the body, thereby preventing diseases and bring back better health .... they heal.

Raw, fresh plants have healthy cells that emit more light than weaker cells in food that is two or more days old. Vegetables picked off the shelf at supermarket grocery stores usually emit a low level of light energy because photons are lost during transportation and storage. Vegetables on the grocery shelf that sit longer than two or three days have probably lost most of their photons.  You can infer this from the wilting of the leaves.  Canned, processed and frozen food emit almost no photons whatsoever. Heating food also destroys the food enzymes and plant photons. Fruit on the vine is saturated with photons. This is why you should consider shopping at farmer's markets for daily picked fresh vegetables and fruits. I try to include at least 90% fresh vegetables and fruit in my daily diet every day. Unfortunately, we do not have an inexpensive instrument to measure the strength of photons in vegetables and fruits in supermarkets.

The diet and supplements above should provide a balance of many minerals, vitamins, proteins, fats, carbohydrates and fiber on a daily basis. How does anyone know that what they eat is really healthy for them? The medical lab tests are not accurate nor practical. An inexpensive and exact way is to listen to your body and interpret how you feel after a meal. I never have headaches; seldom have digestive disorders like bloating or sore stomach; Gurd; itchy skin; itchy or running nose; earaches or sore eyes. I have no trouble sleeping 8 hours a day. I try to get 20 to 30 minutes of sunshine in the middle of the day on about 40 % of my upper body at least three times a week [no sunglasses].

I take no drug medications except three essential prescribed eye drop medications. These medications help stabilize my ocular pressure and help me see better than 20/20. Antibiotics and most medications kill or disrupt all the bacteria in the colon. When this happens, the balance of good and bad bacteria is disrupted, I sometimes get constipated; making it very difficult to maintain a stable good 80% to bad bacteria 20% ratio in the colon.  I stay away from all medical medications .... over the counter and prescription ones.

Does a standardized diet really work? It is proper to ask whether eating a repetitious standard diet really works? Why not do a food analysis? As previously stated, the RDI is based on the assumption that the digestive enzymes will never change as we grow older. But biodiversity tells us that we are all different and the body secretes less digestive enzymes as we get older. So doing a diet analysis can be misleading and may not be all that useful. Medical labs do not have inexpensive tests to evaluate a diet every day and give us instant feedback about the food we eat. But the human body has a built-in lab that instantly analyzes the food we eat and relays it's findings to the mind-brain. The findings are interpreted as feeling good or feeling sick. Each of us has to learn to listen to our body for these messages. This may not be medically sound but it is humanly precise and accurate.

The human body is a nano-hi-tech bio-chemical electric complex and precise machine. The human body makes its own hormones and enzymes. But all machines eventually wear out with use. For example, mechanical machines like car engines and electric turbines, that have rotating parts, use ball bearings to minimize stress so the moving parts and the machines last a long time. Instead of ball bearings, the human machine replaces different body cells regularly from every few days to every month or so. The body needs good food to do this. Although some human parts wear out slowly over time, good nutrition can maintain body parts and extend body longevity.

This author does not eat foods that doctors and others suggest as bad misery foods.

In conclusion, this author shared his diet and why he eats specific foods with you the reader. His diet may not be the best for you as we are different persons. So you should use his diet as a guide. You may need to experiment with and find a diet that is best for you. It is never too late to make changes to your diet and benefit from a better diet.

It is difficult to eat a raw fresh diet every day. Some days are better than others. I go shopping for fresh raw food three times a week at a nearby market-grocery store that has a salad bar. The most essential nutritious foods weigh the most and also cost more than foods with less nutrition. I eat foods that are hopefully at least one to two days fresh. My fresh raw vegetables and beans cost about six to eight dolars a meal [2019]. This is a real bargain compared to a restaurant meal that costs much more and usually does not serve fresh raw food. Do I absorb all the nutrients in the vegetables, fruits and nuts? I really do not know. But my digestive system feels good, my body works well, have a soft bowel movement and I do not need to visit my doctor.

Good fresh raw food is most essential for survival and longevity. The human body is programmed for plant food. The human body has a built-in diet analysis system that instantly analyses the food we eat and gives feed back to the mind-brain that the food is good or bad. The diet analysis used by dieticians is flawed and not as good as the human body analysis. "Food is man's best medicine." Stay well by eating well.

For more information about food, you should refer to:  Choosing best veggeies for a balanced meal