Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/AXL
May 30, 2013
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Thanks to the “super food” debate that has raged over the past
several years, we’ve been led to believe that these and other types of
grains, fruits, and veggies are the key to living a long and healthy
life.
From classrooms to media campaigns, we’ve been told that if
we eat the proper portions of fruits, grains, and veggies each and every
day, we’ll be on the road to a life of optimum health.
But, since
the dawn of the agricultural revolution, and particularly over the last
100 years, we’ve been changing the nature of the food that we produce
and consume, and as result, removing the vital nutrients from our diets
that were once staples of our ancestor’s diets.
Studies published
over the last several years show that our current selection of produce
is remarkably low in phytonutrients, the compounds that reduce the risk
of health ailments like cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
We've
been systematically stripping phytonutrients from our diet ever since
we stopped hunting and gathering wild plants thousands of years ago and
started farming our food.
For instance, since our ancestors first
began to farm, bitter plants have typically been avoided, because they
don't taste as good as starchy, sugary plants.
But, research has
shown that some of the most beneficial phytonutrients are in plants,
vegetables and fruits that have bitter tastes.
Today,
we typically only eat the white and yellow varieties of corn. These
types of corn have 1.54 and 70.2 milligrams respectively of
anthocyanins, a type of phytonutrient, per 100 grams of dried corn.
But,
blue corn, which is nearly impossible to find in any produce section
today, has a whopping 99.5 milligrams of anthocyanins per 100 grams of
dried corn.
Today, we think that spinach is the healthiest green around.
But there are only .89 milligrams of antioxidants per 100 grams of fresh spinach. That's less than one!
In
comparison, wild dandelion greens, which were once staples of Native
American diets and which today are considered common weeds, contain a
staggering 6.89 antioxidants per 100 grams. Unfortunately, it’s nearly
impossible to find wild dandelions at your local grocery store.
Everyone
loves a good Granny Smith or Red Delicious apple, but these varieties
of apples only contain 205 and 108 milligrams of phytonutrients per
liter of juice.
On the other hand, a Siberian crabapple has 4,606
milligrams of phytonutrients per liter of juice. And, Sikkim crabapples
come in even higher than that, at 7,181 milligrams of phytonutrients.
But once again, good luck finding those in the store. They're not as sweet, so nobody wants to buy or eat them.
Prior
to the agricultural revolution, indigenous hunting-gathering people
lived daily in the hands of Mother Nature. If they didn't understand how
she worked, how to sustainably hunt and gather, they wouldn’t survive.
Over
millennia, they learned which plants and grains, fruit and veggies
would provide the nutrition that they needed. They lived off the Earth,
and with the Earth.
But then we began intensive agriculture about 7000 years ago, and everything changed.
Instead
of everybody being involved in hunting and gathering food, now only a
small number of people managed our food production and remained
connected to nature. The rest of us disconnected ourselves from nature,
and even began to see nature as our enemy rather than that which gives
us life and sustains our lives.
Today, that disconnection has gone
on steroids. Food production is controlled by giant transnational
corporations like Monsanto, that care more about making a profit than
providing nutritious foods to the you and me.
Their goal isn’t to
produce foods that contain the most phytonutrients; it’s to produce
foods that will help create the largest profits.
And it's making us sick – and making our planet sick – which is why it needs to change.
During
World War II, we had “Victory Gardens” where people all across the
nation were encouraged to grown much of their own food in their yards.
Today, we instead use more water on our grass than we do on our crops.
We
need to reclaim our plant heritage, take back our heirloom seeds for
all of humanity, and start planting gardens in our green spaces. We need
to reconnect with Mother Earth. And we need to use out government to
break up the big food monopolies that threaten not just our small
farmers and our health, but threaten our entire planet as their
genetically modified genes escape into the wild.
Let's wake up and take back control of our food supply!
We
have a long history of siding with consumers and their right to know
what’s in their food. We fought long and hard for labeling of rBGH,
which was the first genetically engineered technology used in the US
food system. We thank and encourage all those who are continuing this
fight in support of transparency and the consumer’s right to know.
