Is our food supply the first step towards degenerative disease?

Does degenerative disease start in the dirt?

It’s often been said, you are what you eat.  But have you ever considered the significance of how and where your food it grown, especially fresh produce.  One of the major causes of our degraded food supply is poor soil.  Our current farming techniques are a direct result of the poor soil conditions and subsequent food supply that is severely deprived of nutrients.

 

In addition, our food supply is further impacted by the use toxic fertilizers and sprays, picking fruit before it is ripe and freezing it, long term storage, drying; processing and unnatural additives, etc.  As a result, our food is no longer capable of doing what it is designed to do; keep our bodies healthy and free from disease and ailment.

  

Traditional farming vs Modern farming

The traditional farming techniques of crop rotation, mulching and manuring had been used by farmers until the Second World War.  During the war, chemical companies produced phosphates and nitrates to make high explosives.  After the war, these companies were left with a significantly lower demand for their products.

Around the same time, researchers were able to demonstrate that for plants to grow, they only required three minerals; nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK).  This seemed like a good solution, as the chemical manufacturers could continue producing their chemicals and continue to employ their people, and it significantly reduced the cost of traditional farming practices.

 
  

While the scientists were busy looking for the key minerals required to grow plants, it seemed no one was considering what minerals were required to grow humans. Although NPK grows fruit and vegetables that look great, your body actually requires more than just nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  So as the dirt our plants are rooted in becomes deficient in minerals so do we. There are seven major minerals that a body requires for optimal health, they are; phosphorous, calcium, sodium, potassium, chlorine, sulphur and magnesium.  We also require trace minerals that are considered “essential” for human nutrition, and they include iron, iodine, cobalt (vitamin B12), chromium, selenium, copper, fluorine, manganese, zinc and molybdenum.

So even if you eat your whole grains and 7 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, these foods that are produced on huge tracts of deficient soil are one of the underlying causes of the increase in degenerative disease we see in Western Cultures today.

So the next time a doctor or nutritionist tells you that you can get all your daily nutrients from a balanced diet you might want to query them about the state of our current food supply.  Low grade and depleted soil is the first stage of our degraded food supply.  And we haven’t even discussed the nutritional value of processed and foods served in fast food chains. 

Food Processing
Processing, storage and preparation of harvested food that’s already depleted of healthy nutrients because of poor soil conditions will further diminish our food of its minerals, vitamins.  Modern food processing techniques like, cold storage, drying, blanching, pasteurization, ultra filtration, long term storage, green harvesting, over cooking, and hydrogenation are just some of the processes that further impact the value of the food we eat.  So just because food looks good, doesn't mean it's nutritionaly good for you.

There are many scientific studies that have measured the loss of nutrients, vitamins and minerals from the food we eat and the results are of great concern.  To understand the link in greater detail a basic understanding of oxidative stress is required. Stay tuned for a future blog on that topic.  Understanding the detrimental impacts of free radicals, and oxidative stress explains the connection between reduction of nutrients in our diet and the increase in degenerative diseases like Arthritis, Alzheimer's, Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease and Osteoporosis.