Part IIf you were to ask me a few years back if I eat organic food, I would have probably responded by saying, "no, I'm fine buying regular food." After all I'm not one of "those people." You know the kind, the crunchy, granola eating, tree hugging, incense burning, flannel shirt wearing earthy type. I am not like that, you see, for I shave my underarms on a regular basis. I can run a comb through my hair and...well...I'm a republican, after all!
All stereotyping aside, I really didn't get the whole organic thing. It honestly wasn't even on my radar until I was at one of Natalie's check ups. She was no older than three when the doctor mentioned in conversation that he has seen girls as young as 5 or 6 begin to "develop" due to the amount of growth hormones that are put in our food (mainly chicken, beef and dairy products.) This really got me thinking. Wow, people are actually being effected by the chemicals injected into our food. Could this explain why our population is so overweight? Maybe.
A couple years ago, my friend and I took a class on nutrition and digestion. We learned all kinds of things, about how to balance our body's pH, how to do a colon cleanse and how to supplement our body with the right vitamins and minerals. This class opened my eyes to many new ideas, but what stuck out to me was how the food we eat is not what we think we are eating. It is not even the same food as we ate 20 years ago. The food industry, a big business, is not concerned about what we eat. They are made up of publicly traded companies who need to make a profit. How do they make a profit? By pumping our food, (cows, chickens etc) full of growth hormones so they grow bigger in a shorter amount of time. This also applies to produce as well. Our food chain is now composed of genetically altered materials, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and who knows what else. What's worse is they are taking regular food and producing it using synthetic, altered, and highly toxic materials. Just go down the cracker/cookie isle of the grocery store and try to find something for your kids that doesn't contain hydrogenated oil. Good luck. It's even in gram crackers. What are hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils? According to recovery medicine (click link) they are used by the food industry for the sole purpose of prolonging shelf life...to maximize profits. They were banned in some European countries after studies that link trans fatty acid (hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oil) consumption from processed foods to the development of diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Yet our grocery store shelves are packed with items containing these harmful things.
Try to find a loaf of bread or a box of cereal that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. Not too easy. High fructose corn syrup is in most of the food we eat. After reading "Natural Cures, Things They Don't Want You to Know," I learned that one reason high fructose corn syrup is in our foods is because it is highly addictive and extremely cheep to produce. Therefore if we are eating something that is highly addictive, we will want to eat more and more and guess who profits from this? The food industry. Meanwhile, we get fatter and sicker because we are eating food that is not food...it's chemicals. According to the book, not only is high fructose corn syrup addictive, but guess what...it makes you fat! Guess who benefits from this? The food industry again, because now they can sell us "diet food." What is in most "diet" food. You guessed it...CHEMICALS!
I have decided to continue this topic in another blog entry...see part II from October 1.
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