Hunger is the urge to eat and is accompanied by a number of unpleasant sensations. It follows a period when one has been deprived of food, and is generally associated with contraction of the stomach. The individual begins to feel irritable, uneasy, and tired. If a blood sample is taken at this time, the blood sugar level is somewhat low. When food is taken, the individual begins to feel better almost immediately.

Appetite is the anticipation of and the desire to eat palatable food.

People eat not only to satisfy hunger, but also because food has many meanings for them. Good or bad food habits result from the interaction of social, emotional, and cultural factors. In order to help improve your own food habits and to help other people improve theirs, you need to appreciate and understand the variations people have in their likes and dislikes and their attitudes toward food.

Some people have good food habits because they have been fortunate in their early home and school environment. Other people through education have seen the need for change and have been willing to work to modify their habits.

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Cold-pressed vegetable oils.

High quality fresh, cold-pressed, crude and unrefined vegetable oils are recommended as an addition to the diet. The average daily amount should not exceed 2 tbsp.

Vegetable oils are rich in unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins F and E, and lecithin.

Make sure that oils are not rancid (you can taste rancidity) and that they are actually cold-pressed. Most oils so marked, are not cold-pressed, but chemically extracted or heat extracted. Since there is no law against it, manufacturers deceive the public. The only oils that would likely to be the real cold-pressed oils which you could find in the United States would be olive oil, sesame seed oil or sunflower seed oil sold in health food stores, or olive oil imported from Italy or Spain and sold in tin cans in most Italian delicatessens.

Honey.

Natural, raw, unheated, unfiltered and unprocessed honey is the only sweetener used in the Airola Diet, particularly in the diet of older people and children – 1 or 2 tbsp. a day is recommended. Honey possesses miraculous nutritional and medicinal properties and has been used for healing purposes since early history. It has been found that most centenarians in Russia and Bulgaria use honey liberally in their diets.

Better than any other food, honey fulfills Hippocrates’ requirement for an ideal food: “Our food should be our medicine – our medicine should be our food”. Honey increases calcium retention in the system, prevents nutritional anemia, is beneficial in kidney and liver disorders, colds, poor circulation and complexion problems.

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GENERAL HEALTH