August 18, 2010

Do you pay attention to where your food comes from? Do you go to the grocery store and purchase whatever is on the shelf, or do you think about what’s in the food you eat and how it is produced?

Do you spend any time considering the preventative side of taking care of your body through the foods you eat? Do you spend a lot of time and money eating out at restaurants and fast food establishments, or do you devote more effort to preparing home-cooked meals with good ingredients at home?

Where your food comes from is as important as making something at home from scratch. The ingredients and how they are produced say a lot about just how healthy that food really is.

When you go to the grocery store or out to eat at a restaurant, consider the following about the majority of food sold and served there:

• Most grocery store and restaurant meat comes from factory farm environments where the animals are confined in the most abhorrent conditions available. They are shoved together in filthy, unnatural spaces surrounded by waste lagoons, are administered all types of chemicals including hormones, steroids, and antibiotics, and are fed the cheapest and most unhealthy feeds available such as genetically-modified corn, grain, and soy, and renderings of bio-waste products. The waste generated by factory farm facilities contaminates our air, soil, and ground water, which places nearby residents at risk for exposure to pathogenic bacteria like E.coli and others.

• Factory farms are often large in scale, are highly specialized, and function like a factory (hence the term “factory farm”). These facilities use massive amounts of fossil fuel, pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers derived from oil. Small-scale, organic farming operations have been shown to use 60 percent less fossil fuel per unit of food than conventional industrial farms (Norberg-Hodge, Helena , Todd Merrifield, and Steven Gorelick. Bringing The Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, 2002.)

• Conventional produce is grown with pesticides and herbicides, from genetically-modified and engineered seeds, and with modern farming methods which are as harsh as can be to the landscape and damage and strip the soil of its nutrients – substances which are vital to the nutritional density and flavor of the foods you are eating. The over-use of chemicals like insecticides and pesticides has caused rapidly-developing resistance in pests which has rendered these chemicals increasingly ineffective. The production of herbicide tolerant (HT) biotech crops, particularly Monsanto’s RR crops, has resulted in the development ofsuperweed strains that are nearly impervious to even conventional methods. Biotech infodiscusses how cross-pollination techniques, a method employed by GMO companies like Monsanto, leads to further and further resistance in these superweed strains.

• Conventional produce contains higher amounts of water and less nutrition. From Sustainable Table: “A comparison of the nutritional content between organic and factory farmed, conventional vegetables showed that organic produce has higher nutritional value. Organic lettus had 29 percent more magnesium, organic spinach had 52 percent more Vitamin C, organic carrots had 69 percent more magnesium, and organic cabbage had 43 percent more Vitamin C, 41 percent more iron and 40 percent more magnesium.”

• Processed foods in the store (representing at least 80 percent of what’s available) are full of chemically-laden “food-like substances” which contain carcinogenic ingredients, hydrogenated and highly processed oils, MSG and other excitotoxins, are synthetically fortified and contain little to no nutritional value.

• Being a vegetarian or vegan does not mean you are supporting sustainable farming or food. Many vegetarian and vegan foods – vegetables, fruits, grains (including corn), soy, and legumes come from conventional sources and their growth, production, and sale damages the environment. The majority of soy and much of the grain produced in the world comes from genetically-modified sources thanks to corporate bio-terrorists like Monsanto.

• These crops are responsible for damaging farmlands and are destructive to topsoil and biodiversity because of the methods employed in their farming. These farming efforts make use of monocropping – planting the same stains year-after-year, which destroys beneficial organisms and bacteria essential to health. They also employ the use of toxic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Monsanto has nearly 250 million GMO acres worldwide. Sustainable farming doesn’t need harmful chemicals to control pests and weeds, but instead uses nature to manage its land and crops.

• According to Sustainable Table, “Factory farms also threaten our health by incubating infectious diseases that can spread to the human population. Sometimes diseases are transferred directly from animals to humans. In cases of direct transmission, a worker who comes in contact with a diseased animal or its manure can contract the disease and pass it on to their family and community.”

Supporting industrial farming keeps the big players going – and the damage to health and environment, and doesn’t put your dollars toward smaller, family-owned farms whose goal is to bring you healthy food that preserves our health and the environment.

Benefits of small-scale, sustainable farming and food

When you buy sustainable food from small-scale producers, you are supporting local communities and healthy farming practices. The amount of fossil fuels used to transport these products is also greatly reduced, and the overall CO2 emissions into the atmosphere lowered as well.

Although conventional medicine tells us to stay away from saturated fats and red meat, grass-fed beef, eggs, and dairy do not contain artery-clogging fats commonly found in the conventional variety; in fact, they are loaded with conjugated linoleic acid, Omega 3s, and antioxidants.

The process of grazing a herd of cattle on open land and moving them around from pasture to pasture on a day-to-day basis allows regeneration of the land as well as replenishment of nutrients in the soil and grasses. This type of farming actually encourages the health of top soil – one of the most critical areas of the environment which has a profound effect on health. When farmers work with the land to encourage natural biodiversity and development of microrganisms, the result is a win-win situation for all involved, the land, humans, and animals. Organic Grass Fed Beef Info thoroughly explains the vast differences between how grass-fed animals and grain-fed animals are raised.

Scientific research shows that sustainable, pasture-raised, and organic foods provide significant health benefits for consumers. In addition to being raised without synthetic hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, sustainable meat is more nutritious than meat produced by industrial agriculture for the reasons discussed above. A recent report by the French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) revealed that organic foods are higher in both mineral and antioxidant content than their conventional counterparts. Another study from The Journal of Applied Nutrition found that the overall mineral content of organic foods sampled was higher than conventional – apples, potatoes, pears, wheat, and sweet corn. Mercury levels in the organic foods were found to be 27 percent lower than conventional.

From a joint study conducted by CDC scientists, the University of Washington, and Emory University, results revealed that pesticide levels in test subjects dropped to undetectable levels upon switching to an organic diet. When the subjects switched back to a non-organic diet, pesticide residues almost immediately became detectable. (Schafer S., Kristin, et al. “Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability.” Pesticide Action Network of North America, May 2004)

Many health problems have been attributed to the consumption of these so-called foods, and yet the distinction is seldom made. Toxins and chemicals in our food supply are responsible for the onslaught of earlier degenerative diseases than in the historical past. We consume massive amounts of this food each and every day in our homes, in schools, hospitals, offices, stores, and restaurants. Body Ecology provides a good description of toxins in the things we eat and drink and those both in and outside of our bodies.

What are the hidden costs of cheap food?

Here is a comparative analysis of several processed foods versus a real, whole food free from chemicals and other toxins typically found in industrial food from Windy Ridge Poultry, in Alfred, NY:

Switching to natural, organic, and grass-fed foods seems expensive on the surface, but when you consider the medical problems you will save yourself in the long run, not to mention the enormous costs incurred on the health care, environmental, and tax systems we pay for directly out of our own pockets, doesn’t it seem worth it to spend more now and save later? Industrial food may have a cheaper price tag at the store, but the long-term repercussions of eating this way for an extended period of time will definitely show a higher price tag in the future, in more ways than one: you’ll pay with your pocketbook and your quality of life.

To learn more about factory farms, visit The Food & Water Watch web site. And here’s the factory farm list for every facility in the country by state.

Visit the ASPCA’s 10 ways you can help fight factory farms.

Join up with the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign to help preserve the environment and health, and stop this multinational bio-terrorist corporation.

Want to read more?

Proof that real food doesn’t have to cost a bundle, is nourishing, and satisfies!

Food budgets – using creativity and prioritizing for healthy eating

Waste not, want not: tips for saving money in the kitchen

Can you afford not to eat healthy?