Day 9 TIP: Feel Good Health Challenge

Dear Feel-Good-Health-Challengers, hope you’re feeling great and firing on all cylinders today!

Today’s TIP is about food quality and shopping smart. You may have heard some people tout the nutritional superiority of organic foods (or even better, biodynamic), and I would definitely agree that they are incomparable in nutritional value, regardless of whether people say they can’t taste the difference. The reason for this, you ask? When you buy produce, it’s often already at least a week old, plus the soil it came from is nutrient deficient and depleted. Nowadays, commercially farmed soil is especially deficient in most minerals. Typical chemical fertilizers are made up of primarily 3 nutrients: N, P, K, (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium), but where are the rest of the 52 minerals needed for optimum soil health? Nowhere to be found, in most cases! So it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to understand that if our soils are deficient, then the food we eat is deficient, making our bodies deficient.

However, there are some simple steps we can take. Like buying the right things organic (those that matter most) and also buying locally, which usually means much more freshness. Also, it’s very important to be aware of which fruits and vegetables are highest in pesticides. The EWG puts out an annual list of Pesticides in Produce. You can also print the shorter one-page PDF version (for yourself and everyone you love), and stick it on your fridge for quick reference. It contains the famous Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen. If you made the effort to buy the organic counterparts of at least the top 10-15 worst items on that list, you will be doing a great service to your health – especially in the long term – and it’ll only set you back a few extra dollars for the week. If you find it expensive, I suggest you seriously consider paying a premium for quality food now, rather than a lot more in medical expenses later on. Invest in your body, your temple! We all know we spend a ton of money of far less important things.

I think our nearby Runaway Creek Farm puts it best, on their website:

GOOD… Buying foods from organic growers who are passionate about sustainable, healthy food and the future of our planet.

BETTER… Buying foods from organic growers who are local. Support your community and consume less energy from the farm to your table.

BEST… Buying your food from a local organic grower whom you know! Visit our farms and discover our passion for creating your food.

In terms of meats, it is always preferable to choose pasture-raised or grass-fed animals, which is the intended food and environment that all these wonderful creatures were designed for and need in order to thrive. You cannot get health from eating sick animals! The conventional grain-fed animals found everywhere have been literally tortured and fattened up as quickly as possible on a GMO corn-based diet, closely resembling the SAD. It’s no wonder people and animals are both getting sicker together! This type of feed is so unnatural and inappropriate to a cow’s digestive system that it makes their internal organs nearly fail by the time of slaughter. In fact, they are often kept alive with the antibiotic supplements in their diet. I strongly suggest you watch the powerful and shocking (Academy Award nominee) documentary Food, Inc. for more info. Given this, don’t expect to find much of the beneficial Omega-3 fats normally found in their meat; what we get rather is much higher Omega-6 content, which we are already over-consuming as a population.

Same goes for fish, opt for wild caught whenever possible. Farmed fish is fed the cheapest soy and colorants to give them the precise weight and look that sells. Wild salmon is very high in healthy Omega-3 fats because it eats lots of krill, whereas caged farmed salmon has never even seen krill in its entire life! This means that we’re talking about entirely different animals, in reality. A final example is real raw honey (that contains actual bee pollen as well as over a hundred different compounds!), which has almost nothing in common with the sugar-filled bear honey container you may see in grocery stores. Just some food for thought… pun intended!

Let’s make some wise choices where it counts the most and whenever possible. If you’d like to join me and help bring down the price of quality food (which we’re entitled to!), let’s all be mindful consumers and vote with each dollar we spend! Demand inevitably lowers prices, over time. The longer we continue to consume (and thus demand) garbage quality, on and on it will continue to go.

The health of the people is dependent upon the quality of the food they consume. And the quality of their foods depends on the quality of the soil on which that food is grown.
-Jerome I. Rodale (founder of Rodale Press and known for his Prevention Magazine)

Man seeks to change the foods available in nature to suit his tastes, thereby putting an end to the very essence of life contained in them.
-Sathya Sai Baba (Indian guru)

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.
-George Orwell (English novelist and journalist)

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