By Derek Henry, Holistic Health Coach for Healing the Body
It can be very confusing and frustrating at times for people to hear that nothing is good for them anymore. No matter what you decide to eat, someone has to come and pick a hole in it and send you back to the drawing board. Well, it’s time to end the confusion and understand why your food may be hurting you, and the ways you can work around it.
Soil Conditions
To consume food with a high level of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and enzymes, there must be a strong soil nutrient profile that supports production of high quality food.
This is a big fat black mark on the majority of farms today.
Since ‘Big Ag’ became mainstream and decided it needed to feed the globe, soil conditions around the world have been deteriorating at a rapid rate due to the focus on optimizing output and not optimizing quality.
What does a farmer do to optimize yields?
- Continuous cropping for more harvests
- Apply synthetic fertilizers for bigger crops
- Apply herbicides prior to planting, and in the early stages of crop development to ‘choke out weeds’
- Apply pesticides at finishing stages to kill inconvenient insects who are ‘eating up’ their yields
All of these processes may increase yields, but it also weakens the soil nutrient profile which results in food of inferior quality and taste. This will hurt your ability to get the nutrients you need, and also subjects you to chemical residue.
If you want to avoid food grown in poor soil conditions, start your own organic garden to meet some of your families requirements, or support a small, local farmer who does not utilize any of the above practices with regards to soil treatment.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
What is GMO? From Naturalnews.com:
“A GMO (genetically modified organism) is the result of a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. The foreign genes may come from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans. Because this involves the transfer of genes, GMO’s are also known as “transgenic” organisms.”
“GMO’s are currently in the vast majority of processed foods in the United States. While they are banned as food ingredients in Europe and elsewhere, the FDA does not even require the labeling of GMO’s in food ingredient lists. If you buy food from a regular restaurant or supermarket – you’re probably eating genetically modified foods.”
So are GMO’s dangerous? According to the Academy of Environmental Medicine, they are:
“Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system.”
GMO’s are a big social experiment with potentially dire consequences for our food supply. Learn more:
Genetic Roulette – The Movie
If you don’t want to be a part of this experiment, know the top GMO foods to watch for and look for specific ‘Non-GMO’ labelling or farmers that you can trust to limit your exposure to GM foods.
Herbicides, Pesticides, and Fertilizers
How would you like if I sprayed chemicals all over your body? Do you think it might make you ‘sick’, and result in toxicity and destruction of essential nutrients in your body?
Now you know how the plants sprayed by them feel.
The logical point to be made here is that injecting chemicals (synthetic fertilizers) into the soil, on top of it (pre-emergent herbicides), and then on the plants at early stages (post emergent herbicides), and potentially at the finishing stages (pesticides), well, it’s a wee bit much, isn’t it?
Continuously consuming foods that are absorbing these chemicals is a sure fire way to increase your toxin load.
If you don’t want to consume traces of noxious chemicals, simply grow your own food naturally, or find a farmer or label that assures you the food is clean and/or organic (free of any chemical based product).
Antibiotics and Hormones
Now, if consuming plant based food depleted of nutrients and riddled with GMO’s and chemicals wasn’t enough, how about eating animals who consume these plants AND also get injected with antibiotics and hormones?
I know. Real nice, right?
However, this is another reality of how your food is hurting you due to the processes that happen before it hits your plate.
When considering animal protein, you have to realize that the majority of these animals are fed with grains that are treated as above, AND have antibiotics and hormones injected into them. This ruins your inner ecology and digestive system when you consume them, and also screws with your own hormones which can lead to many other undesirable conditions.
This is before we even talk about the living conditions of many of these animals, other things they are fed, and the general treatment of them. You can catch a small glimpse of that in Vegucated.
If you want to consume good animal meat, choose organic grass fed beef or organic ‘free range’ chicken from suppliers you know and trust.
Processing
Processed foods now take up a ridiculous amount of space at your typical grocery store. Most of it is in the form of grains and denatured meat that have been stripped of their nutrients and injected with flavour enhancers, preservatives, and stabilizers. As a result, it ends up becoming a nutrient depleted and toxic food that offers a fraction of the value it had before it underwent processing.
Not only that, but processing also alters the structure of some foods in a way that makes them no longer beneficial in any way to the human physiology.
Take cows milk for example. Once pasteurized, it has removed all delicate and beneficial nutrients like enzymes and good bacteria, and it also changes the structure of the fat molecules making them too large to absorb by the human intestinal tract. This offers no benefit to you and actually produces toxins in your gut.
The answer to this is simple – stay out of the packaged foods aisle more and spend more time in the produce department.
You Have Options
You need to understand that no one is trying to take away your ‘food’. Those that are familiar with the food industry and proper nutrition are simply trying to protect you from bad choices they or their family made that caused deteriorating health. They want you to be independent and “health intelligent”.
And if you think the food supply isn’t causing an issue, think about all the prescription drugs people are on because of bad food choices and what it would be like if they never had those drugs to manage their pain or conditions. It would look very ugly out there.
It’s time to start thinking of the words garden, natural, organic, unprocessed, and unaltered. Understand ingredients and foods you should avoid, and watch movies like Food Inc and Food Matters to get an idea of what is going on with our food supply, and the cost to you.
