92
CHAPTERRidding Your Body
of Acidic Wastes
T
wenty-fi ve years ago, my husband and I spent a week on the island
of Nevis, known to its inhabitants as “the pearl of the Carib-
bean.” It was at that time entirely unspoiled. Hiking along a coastal
road that circled the island, we came across a village woman said to be
106 years old. She sat in front of the open door of her hut; before her
was a grill. A bubbling sound came from a big frying pan placed on top
of it in which she was boiling soft-shell crabs. These crabs and the other
seafood she ate daily came directly from the ocean no more than fi fty
yards from her hut. The rest of her food supplies were even closer at
hand. As we looked around at the sloping sides of the valley in which
her hut was situated, we noticed rows of squash and other vegetables
wedged between tangles of tropical foliage.
The key to her longevity, we suspected, was that she lived her life in
accordance with the cycles of nature. The nutrient loss in the foods she
ate was minimal, since the fi sh and plants were alive only minutes
before she prepared and ate them. She got her seafood from the fi sher-
men just returned from their early-morning fi shing expeditions, as they
tied their boats to the dock. By raising vegetables in her own “back-
yard,” she satisfi ed two basic tenets of good health: she ate food that was
locally grown and what was in season. Since the tropical weather
enabled her to grow her vegetable garden all year long, she never had
to resort to canned or frozen food, thus avoiding the chemical preser va-
tives and nutrient loss characteristic of processed food.
The chance encounter with this ancient but vigorous lady and her
organically grown garden in the midst of natural surroundings illustrates