Our Agricultural Situation
During the time I spent learning about healthy living after a serious case of mercury poisoning that changed my life in 1977, I discovered that the only two lanes at the grocery store I could shop in were the outside perimeter of the store: the produce section on one side and the meat or eggs section on the other side. Items found in the middle of the store, all the processed or “high value added” foods such as crackers, preserves and canned goods, I found are not supporting our health at all. This is a scary fact for the consumer to confront, especially when you consider the amount of money spent each year to convince that this food is good for us in every way, and that we would silly, or worse “uncool”, to think otherwise.
Part of the reason so much of our food is so low in nutrients has to do with our current agricultural situation. 100 years ago when farmers harvested their crops, there were far more nutrients in the soils than there are today. It also didn’t hurt that 100 years ago food went directly from the garden to the kitchen. These days our foods are picked under ripe and refrigerated for a week before they get to the store. Add another week’s time for you to purchase it, bring it home, put it in your fridge and eat it. The enzymes in the food during this time keep diminishing as refrigeration continues. We’ve wasted more than time, considering all this food could be much higher in nutrients.
The second issue is that the food is grown in fields that have been under intense agricultural and industrial style production for over one hundred years now. The mineral content of the food today is much lower than it was thirty years ago. Compared to 100 years ago, well there is no comparison. Today, you have issues concerning chemical fertilizers pushing the vegetable to grow quickly. Because of this, nutrients aren’t drawn through the roots as they normally would be. The food that you buy in your typical grocery store is much lower in value today then it was one hundred years ago.
Because of this, we have to make adjustments in our diets by supplementing these essential vitamins, minerals and enzymes that the body needs to function at it’s best.
