Connected to the Soil

Your food may or may not be nourishing you.

Unfortunately today, eating “healthy” is not enough. We may eat lots of fruits and vegetables, avoiding fried and processed foods but it’s not enough to keep us healthy.

Because we are still consuming conventional food, we are not getting the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients we think we are getting. Today large conglomerate farms who are the major producers of our conventional fruits, vegetables, grains, milk and cheese are the norm and the same is true for the factory farms that provide us with the major supply of our meat and fish. The soil of conventional farms is depleted and has been for the last 80 years.

Conventional farming (i.e., intensive farming that uses chemicals) returns little or nothing to the soil and gradually depletes the soil of minerals. Because only a small number of nutrients are replenished when using chemical fertilizers, (especially nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus), the soil gradually loses its trace elements that are essential for health, such as boron, chromium and selenium. It’s frustrating that the mineral content in our food has become severely diminished. Fruits, vegetables and other plants that we rely upon to supply minerals in our diet cannot take adequate amounts of minerals from the soil if there are no minerals there to take.

Farming is big business and the aim is to give people cheaper food and make profits. This has meant that crops are genetically modified to ensure resistance against disease and to stimulate faster growth, that pesticides and herbicides are used to control pests, that ammonium-based fertilizers are applied to try to improve the soil.

This business has created an entirely unnatural ecosystem, where the soil has become barren and devoid of micro-organisms that are needed to create organic mineral complexes.

Here’s looking at how this has had an effect on some of the things we consume on a regular basis:

WHEAT

Most North American foods now use wheat as their staple base. In South America it may be corn, in Japan soya, in India rice. It can be easy to eat an excess of wheat over one day, with wheat bran or toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, pizza or pasta for dinner, and various cakes and cookies throughout the day. Wheat, barley, rye, oats and spelt are known as gluten grains because they contain stretchy protein called gluten, which can inflame the lining of the gut membrane in sensitive people.

Wheat was not always a staple food of Western cultures. In Britain, flour from lupins, broad beans, acorns and bullrush roots was used as staples until Norman times. None of these flours contained gluten, so unleavened breads were the norm. The first wheat grains, emmer, and einkorn, were very low in gluten. Modern types of bread wheat were introduced in the post-Roman period.

In order to increase the production of wheat, it was genetically modified in the early 1970’s. The head of the wheat was made to contain more seeds. This made the plant top-heavy and the crop fell over. So a hormone was added to thicken the stalk. Then a fungus grew on the stems because they grew so close together, leading to another hormone being added to destroy the fungus. It may be these two hormones, when absorbed in excess, which can upset the hormone profiles of women.

DAIRY

A generation ago, the average dairy cow yielded eight quarts of milk per day, ate mainly grass and produced only one part per 100,000,000 of antibiotics to a pint. Today a typical cow yields 50 quarts per day, may be fed meal made from bone and blood (from cattle, pig, and chicken carcasses) and produces an average of 52 different residues of antibiotics, plus blood and pus in milk. Dairy foods are mucus-forming and may affect people who come from an atopic family (a family with a history of asthma, eczema, psoriasis, hay fever or arthritis).

Human milk has been found tainted with over 350 man-made contaminants including pesticides. In the United States, dairy cows may be injected with a genetically modified growth hormone (rBGH also known as rBST, recombinant bovine somatotropin) to increase milk production. Thankfully, Canadian and European governments have refused to permit the use of this hormone as not only does it increase the incidence of mastitis in cows, but it also increases the incidence of cancer in human beings.

Fortunately, organically reared cows, which eat fresh grass, clover pasture and grass clover silage, produced milk on average 50 percent higher in Vitamin E (alpha tocopherol), 75 percent higher in beta carotene (precursor of Vitamin A) and two to three times higher in the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthine than non-organic milk. Organic milk not only has more antioxidants but also higher levels of omega 3 essential fatty acids.

VEGETABLES

In 1939 and again in 1991, tests were performed on various fruits, vegetables (including carrots, broccoli, spinach and potatoes) and meats for mineral content. It was found that the amounts of calcium, magnesium, iron and copper in our vegetables had declined during those 51 years by as much as 75 to 96 percent, while meats had lost 41 percent of their calcium and 54 percent of their iron. Fruits had lost 27 percent of their zinc. Apples and oranges had lost 67 percent of their iron.

It is not only mineral content that has declined over the past half century. Levels of vitamins A and C have also dropped dramatically. Nitrogen fertilization in conventional farming was found to decrease vitamin C concentrations in many fruits and vegetables.

Using potatoes as one of the examples, in a study to find out what nutrients the potato has lost over the last 50 years. This is what was concluded:

100% of Vitamin A 57% of Vitamin C and Iron 28% of Calcium 50% of Riboflavin 18% of Thiamine

Here are further examples, taken from the USDA’s own studies of the loss of vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables. Today as compared to 1975.

Apples: vitamin A -41% Sweet peppers: vitamin C -31% Watercress: iron -88% Broccoli: calcium and vitamin A -50% Cauliflower: vitamin C -45%; vitamin B1 -48%; vitamin B2 -47% Collards greens: vitamin A -45%; potassium -60%; magnesium -85%

The Pesticide Action Network reported that the overall incidence of cancer has risen by about 50 percent since 1971, and pesticide residues in food may be a contributing factor. International authorities have listed 160 extensively used pesticides as possible human carcinogens.

Tests carried out in 2003 found chemical residues in one third of fruits and vegetables, with some containing as many as five different chemicals, some present in amounts exceeding government-set limit. Safety tests do not consider the ‘cocktail effect’ of the many agro-chemicals and food additives that are simultaneously present in the human body.

Chemicals applied to the surface of a fruit or vegetable can be partially removed by washing or peeling, but some chemicals enter and permeate the plant or are designed not to wash off in water (rain).

THE GOOD NEWS?

The well-enriched soil of organic farms resulted in excellent plant health, which, in turn, produced healthy animals that fed upon well-nourished plants; and human beings whose diet consisted of these fresh and wholesome healthy plants and animal products also enjoyed abundant health.

To add to this, fertilization of crops with cow dung (as may occur on organic farms) can increase vitamin B12 to a level that may contribute significantly to the diet of vegans. Secondary nutrients also tend to be more abundant in organically grown fruits and vegetables.

Organic foods are likely to have higher nutritional content, such as vitamins and minerals. They also rarely contain residues of harmful agricultural chemicals or additives, and for the time being, they exclude GM foods that could damage the immune systems and/or internal organs of experimental animals.

To sum up, food produced according to organic principles is superior to that produced by conventional means. When you consider that organic food has a 50% to 60% higher content of nutrients then conventional food, you will find that you will not have to eat as much. Your body will get the nutrients it needs, with much less consumption, and no poisons.

As humans, we are connected to the soil. If it’s depleted, then so are we.

REFERENCES: I Eat Healthy, So Why Am I Sick? Ira Marxe “The Good Health and Wellness Guy”

Endometriosis: A Key to Healing and Fertility Through Nutrition Dian Shepperson Mills, MA & Michael Vernon, PhD HCLD