Food is Fuel

I must say I agree with the OP. I lived outside the United States for 5 years, on a Caribbean island, where my diet and lifestyle totally changed. I walked everywhere (did not own a car) and ate fresh fruits right from the trees, fresh fish caught that day from local fisherman, and never felt better. It was a life changing experience.

I lost 20 lbs, and other health problems I had totally cleared up, such as eczema, I had acid reflux, that disappeared, and some acne I had on my back went away as well. My cholesterol and blood pressure went down as well. I realized for the first time the direct impact fresh foods have on our bodies.

I am back in the United States, and when I first returned, I tried really hard to stick to eating healthy, but here in this country it takes money to eat healthier, which is so strange. Those people over there on that island, some were dirt poor but their food choices is outstanding. Unfortunately I slipped back into bad eating habits, and gained back the weight I lost. I am now committed to exercising and eating better. I try to continue to eat as healthy as I can. Its definitely harder, but I do try. I eat out and love sweets, and notice the difference in how I feel when my diet is not the greatest.

I also try to eat organic fruits and vegetables when I can,because whether they are more nutritious or not, they most definitely taste better. Hopefully some whose diets subsist of only diet bars and shakes can take a peek in the Food and Nutrition section and get some healthy ideas.

Sigh. Clearly I'm going to have to get technical about how food is grown. Do try to pay attention. You might actually learn something.

Conventionally grown foods tend to be an industrialized business. Vast irrigated fields of mono-crops, no biodiversity.

What people don't think about, because it's too "icky" or too below their holy notice, is that soil is alive. Soil has nutrients. Soil has living organisms, millions of types, that people don't even know about.

When you mono-crop for years (even just for ten years), you have one food type that is sapping specific sets of nutrients from the soil (just like humans, plants have nutritional needs too. Imagine that!) And then, oh no! Suddenly your mono-crop isn't growing so hot anymore. Well, we'll have to do something about that.

And there enters the synthetic fertilizer. Though it may have boosted growth for a years, it was introducing toxic heavy metals and other waste into the soil. (Bet the soil life loved that!) Like wise, they weren't providing the proper nutrients, so while the food grew, it was less nutritious overall.

http://www.turfprousa.com/health_effects_of_synthetic_fertilizer_3006a.html

Likewise, mono-crops have pest problems. When you have acres and acres of the same crop, well... those corn earworms are just gonna march right through it all. Those cabbage worms are going to have a field day with all those brassicas. And the carrot fly? Well, hopefully, you're catching the drift.

That's where the pesticides come in. Drench everything with the pesticides, and kill off all those bad bugs. And then watch it wash off into the soil, and kill those bugs as well.

Now, suddenly, you're getting bugs that are immune to the effects of pesticides. All it takes is one bug surviving long enough to lay eggs, and now you're suddenly breeding poison resistant populations of the bad bugs you don't want. Simple genetics.

http://whyfiles.org/062ag_gene_eng/4.html

That's where GMOs come in. They started breeding corn that produced the toxin created by Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), for instance. It kills by dissolving the stomachs of the bugs. It also kills the beneficial insects, because they have eaten the sickened bugs that were eating the corn. You've now wiped out the bad bugs, and the good bugs that were eating the bad bugs. Yet another ecosystem destroyed.

Still with me?

Likewise, they made several crops Round Up Ready. Like canola. Spray it all, drench it with the Round Up to get rid of the weeds, and then harvest it and process it for human consumption. Yummy. Eat that *kitten* up. And while you're at it, kill off more biodiversity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025534_Roundup_research_toxic.html

So! Now that you have killed off all those bugs, killed off all those pesky weeds, killed off all the soil life and sapped all the usable nutrients from the soil, what are you left with?

Poison soaked, GMO crops that lack in nutrition.

Lets look at the organic method now. When I garden, for instance:

I don't use synthetic fertilizers, poisons or other additives. I don't even use sulfur, which is a natural compound, or DE (diatomaceous earth) for insect control (also a natural substance).

The fertilizer I use comes from one of two things: animal manure (composted) or kitchen compost (veggie scraps, crushed bone and eggshell, leaves, grass clippings, etc). That gets turned under. The soil life loves it. Why? Because what is soil made of? Rotting and decomposing vegetation, animals and *kitten*, essentially. Worms love it, the bacteria love it, the fungi love it. (People, however, seem to have an aversion to it. Sad people they are, too.) Hell, I'm even experimenting with no-till gardening, so I don't have to disturb the soil life much at all, just add layers throughout the year and let it all breakdown.

Why do they love it? For one, I'm not poisoning them. I'm feeding them. I'm giving them a diverse variety of foods to break down and add to the soil. And when they break those foods down, and add them back to the soil, what happens? Well, now there are nutrients there that my plants can pick up to feed themselves. And when I go to eat the plant or the fruit, well, now I'm getting more nutrients too. Nice how that works, isn't it?

I use only heirloom, open-pollinated varieties of seed. They are bred for micro-climates local to the area, and some are even resistant in their own right to disease... and without needing a massive chemical pushing cooperation inserting foreign DNA to make them so.

What about weeds? Who the hell cares? I weed if I feel like it. My garden is filled with oxalis, but I don't mind. I have a crap load of twitch, dandelions, and the occasional thistle. I pull it when I see a need, but I see no point in poisoning it. Then the weeds either go on the compost (if they haven't gone to seed and if they don't grow by bulb or root stem), and I have a special bin for those "pest" weeds like oxalis and twitch, so that they can undergo hot composting to turn them into something useful as well.

Another thing I do is rotate my crops: no one crop is in the same place every year. Since each plant has it's own nutritional needs, I move them around to keep them from sucking the same nutrients out every year. Thus, helping to keep my soil healthy.

It boils down very simply:

Good soil= Good food. Crap soil= Crap food.

And that is just about growing food, never mind what they do to it afterwards when processing it for other products.

This is a pretty simplified way of how I look at things. But hopefully you were able to keep up.

Sigh. Clearly I'm going to have to get technical about how food is grown. Do try to pay attention. You might actually learn something.

Conventionally grown foods tend to be an industrialized business. Vast irrigated fields of mono-crops, no biodiversity.

What people don't think about, because it's too "icky" or too below their holy notice, is that soil is alive. Soil has nutrients. Soil has living organisms, millions of types, that people don't even know about.

When you mono-crop for years (even just for ten years), you have one food type that is sapping specific sets of nutrients from the soil (just like humans, plants have nutritional needs too. Imagine that!) And then, oh no! Suddenly your mono-crop isn't growing so hot anymore. Well, we'll have to do something about that.

And there enters the synthetic fertilizer. Though it may have boosted growth for a years, it was introducing toxic heavy metals and other waste into the soil. (Bet the soil life loved that!) Like wise, they weren't providing the proper nutrients, so while the food grew, it was less nutritious overall.

http://www.turfprousa.com/health_effects_of_synthetic_fertilizer_3006a.html

Likewise, mono-crops have pest problems. When you have acres and acres of the same crop, well... those corn earworms are just gonna march right through it all. Those cabbage worms are going to have a field day with all those brassicas. And the carrot fly? Well, hopefully, you're catching the drift.

That's where the pesticides come in. Drench everything with the pesticides, and kill off all those bad bugs. And then watch it wash off into the soil, and kill those bugs as well.

Now, suddenly, you're getting bugs that are immune to the effects of pesticides. All it takes is one bug surviving long enough to lay eggs, and now you're suddenly breeding poison resistant populations of the bad bugs you don't want. Simple genetics.

http://whyfiles.org/062ag_gene_eng/4.html

That's where GMOs come in. They started breeding corn that produced the toxin created by Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), for instance. It kills by dissolving the stomachs of the bugs. It also kills the beneficial insects, because they have eaten the sickened bugs that were eating the corn. You've now wiped out the bad bugs, and the good bugs that were eating the bad bugs. Yet another ecosystem destroyed.

Still with me?

Likewise, they made several crops Round Up Ready. Like canola. Spray it all, drench it with the Round Up to get rid of the weeds, and then harvest it and process it for human consumption. Yummy. Eat that *kitten* up. And while you're at it, kill off more biodiversity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025534_Roundup_research_toxic.html

So! Now that you have killed off all those bugs, killed off all those pesky weeds, killed off all the soil life and sapped all the usable nutrients from the soil, what are you left with?

Poison soaked, GMO crops that lack in nutrition.

Lets look at the organic method now. When I garden, for instance:

I don't use synthetic fertilizers, poisons or other additives. I don't even use sulfur, which is a natural compound, or DE (diatomaceous earth) for insect control (also a natural substance).

The fertilizer I use comes from one of two things: animal manure (composted) or kitchen compost (veggie scraps, crushed bone and eggshell, leaves, grass clippings, etc). That gets turned under. The soil life loves it. Why? Because what is soil made of? Rotting and decomposing vegetation, animals and *kitten*, essentially. Worms love it, the bacteria love it, the fungi love it. (People, however, seem to have an aversion to it. Sad people they are, too.) Hell, I'm even experimenting with no-till gardening, so I don't have to disturb the soil life much at all, just add layers throughout the year and let it all breakdown.

Why do they love it? For one, I'm not poisoning them. I'm feeding them. I'm giving them a diverse variety of foods to break down and add to the soil. And when they break those foods down, and add them back to the soil, what happens? Well, now there are nutrients there that my plants can pick up to feed themselves. And when I go to eat the plant or the fruit, well, now I'm getting more nutrients too. Nice how that works, isn't it?

I use only heirloom, open-pollinated varieties of seed. They are bred for micro-climates local to the area, and some are even resistant in their own right to disease... and without needing a massive chemical pushing cooperation inserting foreign DNA to make them so.

What about weeds? Who the hell cares? I weed if I feel like it. My garden is filled with oxalis, but I don't mind. I have a crap load of twitch, dandelions, and the occasional thistle. I pull it when I see a need, but I see no point in poisoning it. Then the weeds either go on the compost (if they haven't gone to seed and if they don't grow by bulb or root stem), and I have a special bin for those "pest" weeds like oxalis and twitch, so that they can undergo hot composting to turn them into something useful as well.

Another thing I do is rotate my crops: no one crop is in the same place every year. Since each plant has it's own nutritional needs, I move them around to keep them from sucking the same nutrients out every year. Thus, helping to keep my soil healthy.

It boils down very simply:

Good soil= Good food. Crap soil= Crap food.

And that is just about growing food, never mind what they do to it afterwards when processing it for other products.

This is a pretty simplified way of how I look at things. But hopefully you were able to keep up.

Um, nice story. But how does this prove that organic is more nutritious exactly? Or that GMO produce makes us unhealthy?

This is why I prefer to keep my journal closed.

It is NONE of your business what others choose to eat, especially (but not limited to) perfect strangers.

I enjoy a diet that is a good mix of healthy and not-so-healthy and perform very well while eating a 50/50 mixture of whole foods and not-so-whole foods.

I respect those who go for a completely "clean" way of eating, but no more than I respect people who are even "dirtier" than I am.

I don't like posts like this. I find them discouraging. :ohwell:

Sigh. Clearly I'm going to have to get technical about how food is grown. Do try to pay attention. You might actually learn something.

Conventionally grown foods tend to be an industrialized business. Vast irrigated fields of mono-crops, no biodiversity.

What people don't think about, because it's too "icky" or too below their holy notice, is that soil is alive. Soil has nutrients. Soil has living organisms, millions of types, that people don't even know about.

When you mono-crop for years (even just for ten years), you have one food type that is sapping specific sets of nutrients from the soil (just like humans, plants have nutritional needs too. Imagine that!) And then, oh no! Suddenly your mono-crop isn't growing so hot anymore. Well, we'll have to do something about that.

And there enters the synthetic fertilizer. Though it may have boosted growth for a years, it was introducing toxic heavy metals and other waste into the soil. (Bet the soil life loved that!) Like wise, they weren't providing the proper nutrients, so while the food grew, it was less nutritious overall.

http://www.turfprousa.com/health_effects_of_synthetic_fertilizer_3006a.html

Likewise, mono-crops have pest problems. When you have acres and acres of the same crop, well... those corn earworms are just gonna march right through it all. Those cabbage worms are going to have a field day with all those brassicas. And the carrot fly? Well, hopefully, you're catching the drift.

That's where the pesticides come in. Drench everything with the pesticides, and kill off all those bad bugs. And then watch it wash off into the soil, and kill those bugs as well.

Now, suddenly, you're getting bugs that are immune to the effects of pesticides. All it takes is one bug surviving long enough to lay eggs, and now you're suddenly breeding poison resistant populations of the bad bugs you don't want. Simple genetics.

http://whyfiles.org/062ag_gene_eng/4.html

That's where GMOs come in. They started breeding corn that produced the toxin created by Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), for instance. It kills by dissolving the stomachs of the bugs. It also kills the beneficial insects, because they have eaten the sickened bugs that were eating the corn. You've now wiped out the bad bugs, and the good bugs that were eating the bad bugs. Yet another ecosystem destroyed.

Still with me?

Likewise, they made several crops Round Up Ready. Like canola. Spray it all, drench it with the Round Up to get rid of the weeds, and then harvest it and process it for human consumption. Yummy. Eat that *kitten* up. And while you're at it, kill off more biodiversity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025534_Roundup_research_toxic.html

So! Now that you have killed off all those bugs, killed off all those pesky weeds, killed off all the soil life and sapped all the usable nutrients from the soil, what are you left with?

Poison soaked, GMO crops that lack in nutrition.

Lets look at the organic method now. When I garden, for instance:

I don't use synthetic fertilizers, poisons or other additives. I don't even use sulfur, which is a natural compound, or DE (diatomaceous earth) for insect control (also a natural substance).

The fertilizer I use comes from one of two things: animal manure (composted) or kitchen compost (veggie scraps, crushed bone and eggshell, leaves, grass clippings, etc). That gets turned under. The soil life loves it. Why? Because what is soil made of? Rotting and decomposing vegetation, animals and *kitten*, essentially. Worms love it, the bacteria love it, the fungi love it. (People, however, seem to have an aversion to it. Sad people they are, too.) Hell, I'm even experimenting with no-till gardening, so I don't have to disturb the soil life much at all, just add layers throughout the year and let it all breakdown.

Why do they love it? For one, I'm not poisoning them. I'm feeding them. I'm giving them a diverse variety of foods to break down and add to the soil. And when they break those foods down, and add them back to the soil, what happens? Well, now there are nutrients there that my plants can pick up to feed themselves. And when I go to eat the plant or the fruit, well, now I'm getting more nutrients too. Nice how that works, isn't it?

I use only heirloom, open-pollinated varieties of seed. They are bred for micro-climates local to the area, and some are even resistant in their own right to disease... and without needing a massive chemical pushing cooperation inserting foreign DNA to make them so.

What about weeds? Who the hell cares? I weed if I feel like it. My garden is filled with oxalis, but I don't mind. I have a crap load of twitch, dandelions, and the occasional thistle. I pull it when I see a need, but I see no point in poisoning it. Then the weeds either go on the compost (if they haven't gone to seed and if they don't grow by bulb or root stem), and I have a special bin for those "pest" weeds like oxalis and twitch, so that they can undergo hot composting to turn them into something useful as well.

Another thing I do is rotate my crops: no one crop is in the same place every year. Since each plant has it's own nutritional needs, I move them around to keep them from sucking the same nutrients out every year. Thus, helping to keep my soil healthy.

It boils down very simply:

Good soil= Good food. Crap soil= Crap food.

And that is just about growing food, never mind what they do to it afterwards when processing it for other products.

This is a pretty simplified way of how I look at things. But hopefully you were able to keep up.

I don't like your tone, missy. Don't assume you're more intelligent, enlightened or educated than the rest of us. It's a mistake.

Also TL;DR

I don't like your tone, missy. Don't assume you're more intelligent, enlightened or educated than the rest of us. It's a mistake.

Also TL;DR

Is that threat? Because I don't much like your tone either.

Sigh. Clearly I'm going to have to get technical about how food is grown. Do try to pay attention. You might actually learn something.

How long have you been eating this all organic, home grown, grass fed, unprocessed diet? What were you eating before? And, how has your health improved since switching?

Full disclosure, OP:

I browsed through your food diary and totally judged you.

Just thought I should let you know.

:flowerforyou:

Sigh. Clearly I'm going to have to get technical about how food is grown. Do try to pay attention. You might actually learn something.

How long have you been eating this all organic, home grown, grass fed, unprocessed diet? What were you eating before? And, how has your health improved since switching?

I know you aren't asking me, but I'll answer anyway

I don't know about the person who posted this, but I don't eat ALL organic, home grown...etc. (That would be really hard if not impossible). But after switching from a typical SAD diet about a year ago, to eating mostly organic, grass-fed, minimally processed, local food...etc, I've lost weight, lost body fat, gained energy and most importantly, my unexplained GI problems are under control. No thanks to the docs who had no explanation for what was making me so sick that I couldn't leave the house some days and suggested that I start a mirilax regimen (reeeeeaaaaaaaaal helpful).

Can you describe what you mean by "a typical SAD diet"?

High in sugar & processed foods. Eating out a lot rather than cooking at home. Eating conventionally raised meats & eggs. Heavy on grains, light on fat. Very light on vegetables period. I think that cutting processed food and going for more veggies & meat will have a HUGE impact. Going the extra step to eat more local, organic & grass-fed is a bonus and will most likely lead to even more improved health.

The "Standard American Diet" (S.A.D.) is a similar term, specifically used to denigrate what some authors say is the stereotypical diet of Americans. The typical American diet is about 50% carbohydrate, 15% protein, and 35% fat[5] which is over the dietary guidelines for the amount of fat (below 30%), below the guidelines for carbohydrate (above 55%), and at the upper end of the guidelines for the amount of protein (below 15%) recommended in the diet[6]

From wikipedia

I know you aren't asking me, but I'll answer anyway

I don't know about the person who posted this, but I don't eat ALL organic, home grown...etc. (That would be really hard if not impossible). But after switching from a typical SAD diet about a year ago, to eating mostly organic, grass-fed, minimally processed, local food...etc, I've lost weight, lost body fat, gained energy and most importantly, my unexplained GI problems are under control. No thanks to the docs who had no explanation for what was making me so sick that I couldn't leave the house some days and suggested that I start a mirilax regimen (reeeeeaaaaaaaaal helpful).

I think perhaps you're still missing the point here...

Correlation does not equal causation. I applaud your success and am happy that you've gotten healthier. I too have lost weight (about 70 pounds), lost body fat (about 12%), gained energy, gotten rid of may health issues including persistent allergies my CPAP, & my BP medicine. All my blood work is now normal & my resting HR went from about 75 to under 50. So what was is my diet like? Pretty much the same as it was before, I just eat less food. As an example, last night I ate tacos. When I was at my heaviest, I would have thought nothing of eating 5 tacos. Last night I ate 2 and was content. Did I eat Organic, NOn-GMO minimally processed tortillas, beef, cheese, etc? No. And yet I had the same results you seem to have had. So in this case, does it make sense that the cause was the type of food, or was it in fact a combination of losing weight/fat & getting more exercise?

http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/the-dirt-on-clean-eating/

I would suggest focusing on your own food and not worrying about what everyone else is doing.