Fake Food And Weak Food
I commonly hear people (and doctors) say, “So long as you eat a balanced diet
your body has everything that it needs to be healthy. At one time this was true. It no
longer is. Nutritional shortage is not always obvious. There is plenty to eat in
America. No one I know seems to have a shortage of food. The problem is not the
quantity of food, it’s the quality of food. In America we have a lot of fake food and
weak food.
It used to be that food was grown locally. Everyone would go to the corner
market and purchase their food. Some few individuals at some point realized that if
they sold to a larger and larger area they would make more and more money. The
problem was that the perishable nature of food made it self-limiting. Shipping food
farther and farther away required more time and the food would spoil. Therefore fresh
food was only obtained locally. One of the ways that large food companies got around
this was simply to remove the part that spoiled or perished. They refined it. So we
ended up with our refined flour and sugar and other grains. Because of the bleaching,
coloring and deodorizing it also had the added advantage of being able to mask
inferior quality foods, a wonderful competitive advantage. The problem with the
refined foods, is that the part of the food that perishes or spoils is the part that has the
best nutrition, the vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Another way that the large
companies dealt with the problem was to add preservatives. Food dyes also help give
the appearance of fresher foods. Then to top it off artificial flavors are added in case
the taste needs help. These chemicals are an additional stress on the body as they
have to be detoxified and eliminated – which requires extra good nutrition – vitamins,
minerals and enzymes.
Did you know at one point in time white bread was illegal? It was declared
that to advertise it as food was fraud. This was back at the inception of the Food and
Drug Administration at a time when its purposes were clearer. What we have now are
essentially non-foods (very little actual nutrition) disguised as real foods. A good food
is taken, stripped of its vitality, doctored up with preservatives, food coloring and
artificial flavoring and sold as food to the public.
Not only do we have fake food we have weak food. This is quite unfair in that
it affects those who make a concerted effort to eat well. They eat their fruits and
vegetables and fresh foods. This is not about good things being removed from the
foods or things added to the foods. This is about the nutrients not being in the foods in
the first place. Our soils are missing the vital nutrients and minerals that they once
had. Reports claim that every year we lose more and more of our rich topsoil to
erosion and modern farming methods. The 1992 Earth Summit Report claims that
North American soil had suffered an 85% depletion in minerals over the previous 100
years. Who knows where it is now? Some small part of this is due to the use of flood
control measures. Floods always revitalized the soil with fresh minerals. A much
larger part is due to the use of artificial fertilizers and modern farming methods. Our
bodies require approximately 60 minerals, 20 amino acids and 3 essential fatty acids
to function. When artificial fertilizers are used, the plants take out 60 minerals and the
artificial fertilizer only put back about 5 or 6 of the minerals, the ones that make the
plant look well. After a while the soil becomes exhausted except for those 5 or 6
minerals. The use of artificial fertilizers also affects the microscopic flora of the soil.
Soil micro-organisms help modify certain minerals that allow them to be taken up by
the plants. No flora, no absorption. In addition to this, hybridization and genetic
modification may impact the plants ability to take up the minerals and nutrients.
According Dr. Don Davis, author of a nutritional study published in the Journal of the
American College of Nutrition, “Efforts to breed new varieties of crops that provide
greater yield, pest resistance and climate adaptability have allowed crops to grow
bigger and more rapidly, but their ability to manufacture or uptake nutrients has not
kept pace with their rapid growth.” In other words these newly developed plants have
lost ability to take up nutrients. (His group studied U.S. Department of Agriculture
nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits. 1 The
results showed that the overall levels of six nutrients – protein, calcium, phosphorus,
iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C- were present in noticeably higher amounts (as much
as 38 percent) in the foods grown in 1950 compared to those grown in 1999. Other
studies have shown similar findings. 1,2,3
Let me pose a question. If you hired someone to build a bridge which was
supposed to last for 50 years and it only lasted 10 years, what would you suspect the
reason was? You would suspect that either not enough of the correct materials were
used to build it or inferior materials were used. Most of the health conditions listed
earlier fall into the classification of degenerative diseases. This means that the body
is breaking down prematurely. If your body is breaking down early, a logical place to
look is towards the raw materials put into it, nutrition.
People who do not eat right are weaker. Their structure is weaker, their
function is weaker and their resistance to the stresses of life is weaker. We have taken
what used to be the normal for our culture and turned it into the exception. Those
who receive everything from their diet that is needed in order for their bodies to be
healthy are few and far between. Those that do, make special efforts to do so. Even
those who now eat well with a diet of nutrient dense, fresh organic foods may require
some extra help to catch up from past deficiencies or they may require extra amounts
of a specific nutrition to handle certain “unnatural” toxins that they have been
exposed to. Ridding the body of specific toxins and chemicals requires a lot of very
specific nutrition to support the extra work that is necessary for the detoxification and
elimination pathways that exist in the body. Likewise with the healing of old injuries.
In order for a solution to work and make the body healthier it would have to
work in the direction of removing environmental stresses from the body and / or nourishing and strengthening the body.
What is developing here is a picture of increasing amounts of materials and
activities which place extra stress on the body coupled with decreasing amounts of
materials and activities which defend, strengthen and build the body. Breakdown is
becoming greater than buildup and structure and function are degenerating. Hence we
have degenerative diseases like weak heart and blood vessels, progressive nervous
system disorders, joint disease, digestive system and immune system deterioration,
weak genetic expression and so on.
The modern health care system is sorely lacking as a solution to this problem.
It is failing on several fronts and it is failing for good reason. The fixation on
symptoms and the classification of symptoms does little to provide a solution that can
be used to correct these conditions. Using chemical toxins in the form of drugs as the
therapy of choice for degenerative conditions makes as much sense as fixing a flat tire
by pounding another nail in it. But the foremost reason that it is failing is because the
modern health care system is lacking the most important component of healing, the
intention to heal.
1 “Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?” -Because of soil depletion, crops grown
decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today, Scientific American
April 27, 2011
2 The Composition of Foods- A Study on the Mineral Depletion of the Foods Available over the period 1940 to
1991, Authors R.A. McCance and E.M. Widdowson. (The data used as the basis for this study was published in 5
Editions)
3 “Global Soil Nutrient Depletion and Yield Reduction”, by Z. X. Tan R. Lal K. D. Wiebe Journal of
Sustainable Agriculture, Vol. 26(1) 2005
