Bernard Jensen - Vibrant Health from Your Kitchen

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

/ Believe

I believe man wants to do what is right and will, if shown that doing the right thing will result in a better life.

I believe that we all have the right to pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of happiness will never be fulfilled unless the pursuit of health goes with it. It is your privilege to seek them.

I believe that to attain health and happiness, a person's lifestyle must be approved by the universal God and must be in harmony with natural principles.

I believe in a universal consciousness of sharing, love, brotherhood and peace.

I believe we will have peace when people refuse to take a job that will harm another person.

I believe, given a choice of therapies, that the therapy closest to nature will produce the deepest and most lasting tissue correction.

I believe that the man who conquers his own hostilities does more than if he conquers a whole city.

I believe this book will be a "wayshower," an uplifting experience, bringing us another step toward our final destiny of health, happiness and the joy of living that all people desire.

Dr. Bernard Jensen April 1986

Preface The Reason for This Book

In the past few years, so many of my patients and students have asked fora book that would summarize the food and nutrition classes I have that I finally put aside the time needed to do it. I feel there is an obligation on my part to share what I know about building good health through foods. So I come to you as an ambassador of goodwill, an ambassador with gifts to offer, gifts of health knowledge, of food knowledgeknowledge of the better things in life. In this book, I am giving you the very best I have.

Some of you may have ignored the path of health wisdom and have taken the easy way, the convenient way, the "fast track" in life. Maybe you just didn't want to make the effort. Sometimes it takes a serious health problem to bring us to the place where we are willing to pay attention; but I want to tell you, the wise person learns from the mistakes of others.

According to the National Research Council's Food and Nutrition Board, there is growing evidence of a link between diet and degenerative diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Yet, a survey by the National Research Council released in 1985 found that the average medical school teaches the future doctors of the United States too little about food and nutrition. Covering 45 of the country's 127 medical schools, the survey showed that the average medical school graduate has received only 21 hours of nutrition education in 4 years of study. Twenty percent of the schools surveyed provided less than 10 hours of nutritional studies and 60 percent provided less than 20 hours. The National Research Council recommends at least 25 to 30 classroom hours of nutrition education. Until doctors receive better and more thorough training

in food and nutrition, it is up to the individual to find out how to eat right to stay healthy and to avoid the chronic diseases that are so prevalent in Western nations in our time. This is one of the main purposes of my book.

We don't always want to come into this health work, this nutrition work, but I want to say there is an extreme obligation on the students' part. Life is a school, and to do well in it, you need knowledge and wisdom. If you are in the 2nd grade, you have to learn; if you are in the 5th grade, you have to learn. There is always something more to learn, to get ready for the next higher grade. We are "in training" on this planet to do better things, not to make the same mistakes every day. We're here to follow the path of wisdom. This book is slanted toward the best health possible through nutrition.

Students have an extreme obligation to realize that there may be a better way than the one they are following now. We should have an inquiring mind. We should want to do the right thing. We should neverslam thedoor on anything until we find out whether it could be a better way of life. They say "Opportunity is knocking at your door." Will it return if you slam the door in its face?

I think it is time we have a better communication with one another, person to person. We must learn from the mistakes of others because we just can't afford to make their mistakes all over again. I don't think we're going to live long enough to repeat all the mistakes that others have made. We might as well learn from one another. We might as well find out whether we have missed something we should know in order to have a more complete life.

My mother used to say, "Health isn't everything, but without health, everything else is nothing." She would also say, "You can lose your money and you've lost a lot; you can lose your health and you've lost still more; butif you lose your peace of mind, you've lost everything."

In the wholistic approach to health, nutrition is only part of a larger picture, only one aspect of the healthy life. I would like to teach about peace of mind, happiness, nature, relaxation, beauty and securitywhere our security really is. I would like to teach about wisdom and knowledge, and how to use them to serve others and live the good life. I would like to teach about true cure and how it takes place from the inside out, how we liveon whatwepourout.

If we don't have anything withinspiritually, mentally or physically, how can we express the worthwhile life?

We find that nutrition and foods are a good place to start for the average person. This will provide a foundation for getting into good health and not into treating disease. When we treat the patient on the other end of disease symptoms, building toward better health by taking care of the whole person, the symptoms are often left behind. Drugs may change the blood chemistry, but they cannot rebuild or replace tissue. Only foods can do that. This is why we need to know about nutrition and foods.

Many reasons can be brought out to explain why people eat the way they do, but lack of knowledge is the number one reason. We may have put our health in the hands of doctors who have never studied enough nutrition to offer advice to the family. We may have been following food traditions passed down through the family without considering a balanced food regimen. The family is considered the basic social unit of a healthy society, but we can't have a healthy society unless the family has the proper food knowledge to be healthy.

This book is a guided tour through the experiences I have had in taking care of thousands of patients through nutrition. It is meant to be practical, useful in food shopping, food preparation and in the kitchen. It represents a concerted effort to help every member of the familyno matter what agecome to a better level of health.

Teaching you these things fulfills my side of the obligation; learning them and enjoying better health will fulfill your side.

TAKING ON A NEW PATH

This book is an introduction to a new way of living. We cannot hold on to the old, otherwise the new cannot take its place. Coming into this health way is taking on a new path, a new direction, a new obligation and eliminating theold ways, the ways that cannotbuild good health. If we are going to build new tissue to replace the old, we have to clean out our pantry, we have to have new insight, new outsight and a new homesite. We have to movewe won't have the same address anymore. We are going to a new place, a new level in life.