Organic Produce

Listening to Nature

Have you ever noticed how so much of the published information about food and health tends to obsess about single nutrients or isolated aspects of diet? People who care about health or food tend to be counting calories, or believing in the regulation of carbs, or trying to boost bone health by drinking calcium-fortified milk.

So much of our health science seems to seek as the ultimate goal a pill that will reverse the effects of junk food without making the patient actually give up that junk.

The subtext of this cultural reductionism is that altering, extracting from, isolating, adulterating and fabricating foods is not to be questioned. We just need to keep trying to reverse-engineer nature so that we can receive the benefits of healthy foods without having to actually eat them.

The adulteration of real food is done with one goal in mind: to benefit and create profit for manufacturers. Among other reasons, food is processed so it lasts long enough to survive transportation and maximize shelf life at the store. The readily accepted view that the offerings of Mother Nature can be improved lead us to look for magic potions or supplements we think will protect us from disease caused by our poor food and lifestyle choices in the first place.

Entrepreneurial types and corporate America, in general, try to monetize research findings. The benefits of eating garlic, for instance, are widely known. But instead of eating garlic, we buy garlic pills. How is it that we have been led to believed that garlic pills can offer the same or even any of the benefits that eating whole fresh garlic offers? And how is it that we've come to a point where we'd rather swallow a pill than enjoy healthy foods cooked with delicious fresh garlic?

Eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, beans in their most intact and unadulterated natural form is what nature intended for us and the only way we can nourish ourselves for maximum health. It's no coincidence that the same foods that are most healthful are so tasty.

Food manufacturers spend billions of dollars in marketing to convert us into industrial consumers of fragmented foods. We have become indiscriminate consumers of processed junk food that TV and magazine ads push our way. We buy into the falsehood that breaking down food into its component parts is not only not harmful, but actually better. We give manufacturers license to turn something perfect into something flawed and deficient. And we willingly pay them more money for such adulterated and fragmented foods and supplements. Most people spend thousands of dollars each year in processed foods, supplements and diet pills. We reduce food to nutrients without realizing that in the process we robbed ourselves from the real vitamins, minerals, enzymes, phytonutrients and other compounds that can only truly benefit us when they come together as a package put together by Mother Nature: whole plant foods.

We pay for the processing, then later we pay the doctor and insurance company to give us drugs that help us survive the health effects of all this industrialized foods. We pay and pay and pay -- and that's what it's all about. A recent study found that by 2030, total healthcare spending resulting from obesity alone will top one trillion dollars.

An eating plan consisting mostly of whole plant foods offers the most perfect form of nourishment for best health. Research has shown that vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds and legumes contain thousands of important compounds that prevent damage by eliminating free radicals in the body. Research also shows that organic produce has higher antioxidant content than its conventional counterpart. These biologically active compounds present in plant foods are most effective when they act together rather than in isolation. Their effects in our bodies come from their wholeness as all these compounds complement each other to activate mechanism within our bodies that protect us against the effects of toxins or radicals in the body.

Instead of trying to reverse engineer, adulterate, modify, isolate and "enhance" natural foods, all we really need to do is enjoy them -- and the wonderful health they give us when we don't tinker with them.

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