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Plants for Health
The medicinal herb bed at Plants For A Future's Cornwall
site.
Our health depends on plants:
- for food,
- for medicines,
- for creating a healthy environment.
Food
We need to eat plants to stay healthy. Fruits, vegetables, cereals,
pulses (peas and beans), tubers (eg potatoes), and nuts are all plants.
There is strong evidence to show that we are naturally plant eating
animals, and evolved from tree dwelling apes who ate mostly fruits,
leaves, and sometimes nuts. Our guts are long - like that of
herbivores, which are designed to digest vegetation. The guts of
carnivores are short to enable them to expel decomposing meat residues
quickly. Meat is full of toxins from the animal at the time of death,
and these toxins can be absorbed into the blood, contributing to all
sorts of disorders, including headaches, arthritis, cancer and heart
disease. Because we do not have a digestive system designed to cope
with meat, our health will suffer if we eat it.
And apart from mothers' milk for babies, dairy products are not a
natural food for us. Milk, cheese, butter, cream, etc cause many
problems including eczema, asthma, allergies of all kinds, hayfever,
digestive disorders, arteriosclerosis and osteoporosis (a disease where
bones loose their calcium, become brittle and break easily). Yet
doctors often tell us to drink plenty of milk to prevent osteoporosis.
But cow's milk is difficult to digest and generates a lot of mucus in
the body. Its calcium is neither balanced nor easily available, and
milk actually helps to create osteoporosis. This problem can be
prevented by plants, ie relying on green vegetables, pulses and nuts
which are much better sources of calcium (and magnesium - which is
needed for calcium utilisation).
Taking adequate exercise is also important.
There is ample medical evidence to demonstrate that there is nothing
that we need in our diet that cannot be obtained from plants (excluding
vitamin D - which we get from sunshine). Even vitamin B12, originally
thought to be present only in animal products - especially in the
liver- is also available from certain lactic fermented foods like
sauerkraut; possibly certain seaweeds; spirulina, a blue-green alga;
and our own guts (if they are healthy and have not been abused with
antibiotics).
Medicines
One can use a healthy well balanced diet based on natural plant foods both to:
- Maintain good health and prevent diseases;
- Treat diseases.
This use of food is called Dietary Therapy. Fresh wholefoods, eaten as
close to their natural state as possible, are very effective in
allowing the body to heal itself from the diseases of modern
civilisation.
Processed foods and animal products, together with a lifestyle divorced from nature, are the prime
causes of many diseases. But health can be gently restored using natural wholefoods and healing
herbs.
Many herbs also have important medicinal qualities - and provided one does not play around with
poisonous plants - they are totally free of harmful side effects - unlike the modern drug industry.
At Plants For A Future, we are growing and making available a wide variety of food plants,
including herbs, perennial vegetables, fruit bearing shrubs and trees, nut trees, edible tubers,
legumes and perennial cereals - together with information about them.
The use of herbal remedies, and the incorporation of these beneficial foods into the diet will help to
promote health, especially if it is part of a well balanced wholefood regime with a minimum of
processed foods and animal products.
Creating a Healthy Environment
Plants help to promote health in more ways than just food and medicine. Plants - especially trees
and shrubs - improve the quality of the environment in many ways. They:-
- clean and oxygenate the air;
- remove carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas);
- bind the soil and prevent its erosion;
- help control the water cycle, (encourage normal rainfall, help prevent floods and droughts);
- moderate temperature extremes.
In this way they improve the climate. Last, but not least, their greenness and vitality is very
pleasant and adds an unmeassureable quality to the environment.
At PFAF we are trying, more than anything, to improve the environment. We emphasise perennials
because these involved far less soil disturbance and are therefore more beneficial. We hope that by
making the plants and the information available, more people will be encouraged to adopt a more
environmentally aware lifestyle and to live more in harmony with nature. As our diet is improved
and we rely more on natural foods, and as we improve our own environment by growing plants -
especially trees and shrubs - then our health can only benefit.
You might also like to have a look at the leaflets
Fruit - Food of the Gods
and Green Leaves
which look at the nutritional aspects of fruits and leaves.
Readers Comments
Plants for a Future does not verify the accuracy of reader comments,
use at your own risk. In particular
Plants For A Future can not take any responsibility for any adverse effects from the use of plants.
You should always consult a professional before using plants medicinally.
Plants for Health
Amanda
Tue Jun 10 09:35:56 2003 Dear PFAF,
Just noticed that on the page you say:
"Even vitamin B12, originally thought to be present only in animal
products - especially in the liver- is also available from certain
lactic fermented foods like sauerkraut; possibly certain seaweeds;
spirulina, a blue-green alga; and our own guts (if they are healthy
and have not been abused with antibiotics)."
As far as I know, this statement is rather dangerously out
of date:
Vegan Outreach - B12 Letter
includes the section:
Is there a vegan alternative to B12-fortified foods and supplements?
Claimed sources of B12 that have been shown through direct studies of
vegans to be inadequate include human gut bacteria, spirulina, dried
nori, barley grass and most other seaweeds. Several studies of raw
food vegans have shown that raw food offers no special protection.
Reports that B12 has been measured in a food are not enough to qualify
that food as a reliable B12 source. It is difficult to distinguish
true B12 from analogues that can disrupt B12 metabolism. Even if true
B12 is present in a food, it may be rendered ineffective if analogues
are present in comparable amounts to the true B12. There is only one
reliable test for a B12 source - does it consistently prevent and
correct deficiency? Anyone proposing a particular food as a B12 source
should be challenged to present such evidence.
I know you're very busy, and have a full inbox, but this
seemed sufficiently important to need bringing to your attention.
Whilst I'm here: What are the best resources for working out
nutritionally complete vegan diets which don't rely on imported foods
like soy?
Thanks!
Amanda Plants for Health
Sat Aug 23 07:01:40 2003
I am very curious about MACA containing vitamin B12, Does MACA contain enough
B12 to use as a supplement in a vegan diet?
I started doing a lot of reading about MACA and there are alot of articles
out there saying that MACA contains B12. Is this true?
Concerned vegan,
George B. Plants for Health
Star
Tue May 4 14:41:45 2004
There is a lot of information and misinformation surrounding vitamin B12, I have read many Scientific and medical studies in order to try and find a grain of truth in the confusion, I have come to the following coclusions....
The body has mechanisms to make it's own B12 (this can be backed up by mnay studies both old and new)this also applys to our nearest relatives the apes and indeed to herbivorous animals like the cow
The body also constantly recycles it's B12 (as it does it's protein)
B12 is partly made up from the mineral Cobalt, where this is missing from the diet then B12 deficiency can follow
B12 is needed in tiny,tiny amounts and it may be that as yet it cannot be seen in very small amounts using present technology, this is the case with other trace nutrients.
All RDA's are based on average current consumption and NOT on proven need, it has been shown with other nutrients that RDA's are often set too high to allow for a margin of error.
True B12 deficiency is not common because of the fact that all vitamins work with other nutrients and therefore single deficiencies do not happen.
Nearly all B12 deficiency studies find that the elderly and those with digestive problems are the people most at risk from B12 deficiency, due to a lack of Intrinsic Factor in the stomach.
Benzene from unleaded petrol car exhausts has been found to adversley affect B12 status in humans(meat and plant eaters)
UPto 85% of B12 is destroyed when subjected to heat (who eats their meat raw??)
The most common way to make "vegan" B12 supplements is from bacteria grown on human effluent (nice!)
Our sterile environment also destroys the B12 producing bacteria in the soil.
I hope this will inspire discussion! I'm not gonna say "don't supplement" but I just want some unbiased logical facts out there, as I'm sick of being told "facts" by both the meat industry and the supplement industry. I encourage you all to think for yourselves, pursue logic and fact and then make your own informed decisions
Plants for Health
Korn
Wed Jun 1 2005 I think a main problem with B12 and plants is that most of them (there are more than 275,000 species) have never been tested for B12. Another problem is related to B12 analogues. Both plants, multivitamin supplements, animal foods and B12 fortified food (and humans!) contains B12 analogues, and B12 deficiencies have been cured by giving people a mix of B12 and inactive B12 analogues, but we know far too little about this yet.
There's a list of plants that are reported to contain B12 here:
http://www.veganforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22
The question is of course, how many of these plants are eaten by strict plant eaters, and what else do they consume that will affect their B12 levels? Are they fresh? Cooked? Organic? Have they been exposed to chlorinated water?
The list above doesn't claim that all the B12 in all these plants is active and contain no B12 analogues, it's more a documentation of what other sources (mainly non-vegan) have found out about B12 in plants. The Vegan Forum This forum is meant as abasis for a discussion about possible vegan B12 spurces Plants for Health
Kristin Phillips
Fri Jul 15 2005 In regards to B-12, I understand that Nutritional Yeast (US name) is an excellent source.
Is this considered a vegan product? Thank you. Plants for Health
Subodh Jain
Fri Jan 27 2006
Natural Medicinal Herbs More than 50 herbs and herbal palnts information with there uses, dosage and side effects. Plants for Health
Roger
Sat Jan 28 2006
Natural herbs Learn about herbs for health to cope with common ailements with medicinal plants Plants for Health
Sat Mar 4 2006
Herbal Medicines Several herbs to cope with common diseases with herbal plants Plants for Health
Andy Hooker
Tue Mar 28 2006 On a recent trip to Mexico a tour guide said that the Warumbo plant was good for diabetes. I have been search the Internet fro such a plant and can't find anything. Has anyone ever heard of such a plant? Plants for Health
Sat May 6 2006
Natural medicinal herbs Essential information on healing herbs, dietary supplements, natural herbs, herbal remedies and medicinal herbs. Plants for Health
Thu May 11 2006 Dear Sir and Madame ,
I would like to lean training build small farm spirulina.
I'm very need anyone help me to make spirulina .
Best regards,
phuc
Plants for Health
Thu May 11 2006 Dear Sir and Madame ,
I would like to lean training build small farm spirulina.
I'm very need anyone help me to make spirulina .
Best regards,
phuc
spirulinavn@gmail.com
Plants for Health
Tue May 23 2006
Herbal home remedies Herbal home remedies for common ailments Plants for Health
leah almonte
Wed Jan 3 2007 Can you give us more info on guava leaves extract? What are its uses and functions?
Plants for Health
Isaac
Sat Apr 21 2007 The following link seemed to provide some interesting information on the above topic of B12, specifically with regards to spirulina which seems to be a pretty hot supplement right now:
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-7c.shtml
Organic Herbs - Organic Spices - Organic Tea Starwest Botanicals is a leading supplier of Organic Herbs, Spices, Tea, and other natural products. Plants for Health
gordonkilgore6
Mon Oct 8 2007
Raw Food Diet Raw food diet is catching on with people of all ages across several countries in a big way. Before we go on to what are the different kinds of foods that can be considered raw foods, and that what the advantage of such foods are, an understanding of what raw food actually means, is very important. Add a comment/link:
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