When you hear this, you’re really going to be mad. I bet you will not believe this about the food you’re eating. Listen to this, and see what you think. The nutritional value of the foods that we are eating today is often more than 50% LESS than it was just a few years ago. Can you believe that? A recent USDA study showed that over 90% of Americans are not getting the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of essential vitamins and are not eating the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. This means that they cannot be healthy.
The vitamin and mineral levels of our commercially grown foods are dangerously low. Many minerals like zinc and selenium are almost non-existent due to modern agricultural practices. The nutrient disappearance from our farmlands is caused in a large part from the practice of dumping millions and millions of tons of herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers onto our fields. Then, food processing takes out a lot of the remaining nutrients.
The connection between diet and disease has been known for a long time. It’s no longer just some “nature lover” yelling in the woods, as the commercial food industry would like you to believe. Diet and disease are inextricably connected. However, the time it takes for a “clinical deficiency” to show up may be many years. The food industry knows this and uses it to its advantage.
If we sit idly by while our health and that of our children and grandchildren deteriorate ever so steadily, we are forfeiting our guardianship of our lives and of the lives of our precious loved ones. We are not helpless. We do not have to sit on the sidelines and complain that “they’re just too big,” and that “nutrition is just too hard for us to understand.” We can take the following simple steps that can make a big difference in how well all of us feel and in how long we live:
1. Eat as little processed foods as possible.
2. Eat organically grown fruits and vegetables whenever possible. Or, buy locally grown produce from farmers that you are able to ask questions of and that you can build a relationship with. You can do that with the meats and poultry too. You may be able to find local farmers who are not certified “organic” but who can show you that their animals are raised humanely and are allowed to graze in fields rather than in feedlots and that their produce is grown using good, old-fashion fertilizers with no chemicals, herbicides, or pesticides.
3. Watch what you, your children, and grandchildren are eating. We’ve all heard the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Well, much of what we as Americans are eating today is worse than garbage. We know to stay away from garbage because it stinks. But not so with our modern foods, because the processing and chemical additives allow the foods to taste good even though they are rendered more detrimental than nutritious. If you must eat processed foods, read the labels, understand how “iffy” labeling words are, and realize that making a dollar is much more important to many processors that is nutrition.
4. And, finally, along with an enzyme formula (see the previous newsletter), find a good, non-synthetic multiple vitamin and mineral supplement that uses as many of the “natural” ingredients as possible. Often whole food supplementation is a good alternative. While no supplement is as good as “real food,” in our modern world, complete nutrition claims that we supplement without we are eating only whole, organically certified foods grown on enriched soils.
Feature Image: FITSO