I can still hear my mother screaming at me across the dinner table. "Eat your peas!" she would bellow at the top of her lungs. Let me tell you, peas can be pretty disgusting to a 13 year old. But I listened and to this day, I am glad I did. Having been a very ill child, it took lots of good food and some help from a few supplements to get me back to health. And the beauty of it all is that I did it WITHOUT harmful drugs. Yes, you really can eat your way to good health. Hopefully, after reading this, you'll know how.

While a complete course on nutrition would probably put you to sleep, some basics should get you started in the right direction and put you on track to having a healthier you.

Before we begin, the one thing you need to understand is that you must eat a balanced diet. Too much of one kind of food, no matter how good it is, and not enough of another food group is not going to produce the results that you're looking for. What exactly then do we need to do?

For starters, lots of fresh fruit. I'm not talking about the canned peaches that you get in the supermarket. Canned fruit has very little value and should be avoided. All fruit that you eat should be fresh. One thing about fruit that you need to know. Don't eat melons, cantaloupes, and watermelons with other kinds of foods. Eat them separately. Other than that restriction, try to have at least three servings of fruit each day.

Vegetables are also very good for you. Again, fresh is better than frozen and certainly better than cooked. Cooking vegetables pretty much kills all the vitamins that are in them. The best form of vegetables is to drink fresh vegetable juice, especially carrot juice. You're going to need a juicer for this. Trust me, one of the best investments you'll ever make. Drinking fresh vegetable juice will allow the vitamins and minerals to absorb in the bloodstream quicker.

If you're going to eat grains, eat only whole grains. This goes for bread and cereal. On thing you have to know about eating grains is that you have to chew them slowly and thoroughly because grains can be very hard to digest.

Nuts and seeds are also terrific for good health. Only eat fresh nuts and seed. Stay away from salted peanuts as they are very bad for you. The amount of salt in them can send your blood pressure through the roof, not to mention how much water it will make you retain.

If you're going to use any sweetening, use only fresh fruit or a little honey. Stay away from anything made with sugar or corn syrup, especially high fructose corn syrup.

If you're going to eat meat, stay away from beef and pork. Try to eat things like chicken and turkey. Fresh fish is also very good, but not frozen fish and stay away from shellfish.

Good health through eating right is really a lot more complicated than what can be put into a brief article, but if you start with some basics, you'll begin to feel a lot better than you do now, especially if you've been living on fast food and chocolate layer cakes.