After listing a myriad of health ailments, Shearer promises to eliminate all illness by following her "Perfect Health lifestyle." My biggest beef (ha - no pun intended) is with her idea of God-made food. She says, "we have God-made bodies and if we put God-made food into God-made bodies it will result in God-made health." But her belief is that our bodies are only biologically designed to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts. I kept thinking about the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness, being fed on manna and quail. Quail would be an animal product, a meat, thus it would be outlawed from the Perfect Health plan. Yet, it was truly God-made and it was God's distinct provision for that time. God outlines animals which may not be eaten, thus He clearly expected that others would be eaten.
Now, I'm not arguing with her complaints against the many additives and chemicals we are now ingesting in our highly processed diets. And I agree that our bodies would benefit from eating more fruits and vegetables. I'm just not willing to chuck everything else out the window. Perhaps it is just my stubborn desire to keep my ice cream and my dark chocolate and my trips to the Mexican restaurant for spinach quesadillas and beefy-cheese dip. Perhaps, I simply lack the will-power to give this plan a whirl. I know that I'm not ready to do the recommended lengthy fasting detoxes (frankly, I've seen video coverage of individuals after a month-long detox and they look perfectly unhealthy, if you ask me ... one struggled to eat a prune after a month of detoxing). And I don't want to become a food snob, the type of person who looks down on everyone else because their diet is obviously not as wholesome and good as your own.
At the same time, I have already begun attempting some of the changes recommended by this book (I'm certain that there is a middle line and I hope to find it). I cannot swallow the idea of switching entirely to a diet of raw fruits and vegetables. Yikes! But, I can make small changes in my daily food choices.
Shearer recommends five steps for converting to her lifestyle plan. Step one is to eat one fruit meal a day. I can handle that and have been trying to eat either mandarin oranges or a banana along with some sunflower seeds for breakfast in the morning. That is entirely do-able. Step two is to snack on raw fruit or vegetables before you eat refined sugar or heated fats. Step three is to start all cooked meals with raw vegetables. I can manage a salad, but still find myself getting tired of it and really hate the idea of munching on raw carrots or celery or roughage like that. Step four is food combining (not sure I buy into this whole idea either - can think of too many meals I enjoy which combine a starch and a protein in the same meal). Finally, step five is to try to eat animal protein no more than once a day, preferably no more than three times a week. (She does allow for people who embrace animal protein but she insists that it is unnecessary for receiving your daily protein requirements).
There was definitely good advice given here, I just can't jump on board with the extremes. At the end of the book, Shearer provides many healthy recipes which would work with her lifestyle plan. Personally, I can't see my family making the switch to this lifestyle plan. It would be very hard going. I'm not saying it wouldn't be worthwhile. I think it would probably lead to better weight and healthier bodies. But, I doubt it would lead to "perfect health" with no ailments to deal with. For example, Bryce suffers from supra ventricular tachycardia. That was not caused by his diet and it will not be cured by his diet. I just believe there are illnesses that will come in this life and any claim to be able to sidestep all illness seems like a pretty tall boast.
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