What Are We Really Eating??
WHAT ARE WE REALLY EATING ??????
It's 1954. Mom and Dad ant the kids are sitting down to Sunday
dinner after church. The meat and potatoes have been simmering
in the slow cooker accompanied by sliced up onions and carrots.
Bread and butter and pickles add to the meal. After the main
course, Mom produces a layer cake with chocolate frosting.
What was wrong with this picture, and is it even worse now?
Well, it might have been okay if the potatoes and carrots and
onions came from the family garden. There is a good chance they
did. Bread was already at the point of almost no nutrients
because of "refining" flour and adding back a chemical version
of just two or three of the nutrients that had been refined out!
Butter later came to have a bad name, but we know now that it is
infinitely preferable, in moderation, to trans-fatty acids that
are found in homogenized fats like margarine. The cake might
have been made with lard or butter (both animal fats and thus
saturated) or, much worse, our great "health breakthrough",
vegetable shortening. The idea was right. Vegetable fats would
have been much better IF they hadn't been homogenized to be
solids. Homogenizing causes the formation of trans-fatty acids.
Yes, in your milk too.
What is so bad about trans-fatty acids? They are an unnatural
formation of nutrients that are foreign to nature and thus, to
us. Our bodies don't know what to do with them, and they either
excrete them entirely as bowel problems, or deposit them on the
walls of our arteries and heart.
So what if our veggies are NOT from our garden? Especially in
winter, when our veggies are imported from other countries, they
are often grown in conditions that are illegal in the US. Like
fertilized with human waste or banned chemical fertilizers and
weed killers. A good plan is to eat mostly the veggies that are
in season. And if you MUST have strawberries out of season, buy
frozen ones that were raised and processed in the US. Or
whatever area you live in. Use Farmer's markets and stands. Grow
your own if you can.
The meat is a real problem. In 1954 there were no "safe
handling" labels on the meat. A great deal of what we ate was
produced locally. Today meat is a produced form cattle that are
fed grains in over-abundance, growth hormones. antibiotics, and
under abusive conditions which cause stress hormones in the end
product .We all know about antibiotics, but celiac disease from
grains is rising..
Organic foods are best, but they are expensive. If you can't
afford them, then buy locally when you can. Any vegetables are
better than none. Eat things in season. Your body seems to know
and do better on them. Fat free milk is not homogenized. You can
buy light cream and reconstitute whole milk without the
trans-fatty acids.
There are un-refined sugar and salt available that still contain
all the nutrients that refining discards.
When we went into mass truck-farming, and grain fields, we added
chemical fertilizers and lost all the trace minerals we
desperately need, like chromium, boron, magnesium, zinc, copper
and all the others that we need for good vision and bones and
general health. I urge you all to take a GOOD multi-vitamin in
addition to your careful choice of foods. For Your Good Health!
Publisher's note: The author is a practicing alternative
medicine practitioner, lecturer and columnist.