“New” Nutrition For The 21st Century

real food is back in style

Old wives tales

When I was young, my friends and I heard what we called old-wives-tales about health and food…We rolled our eyes and looked at our mothers as if they were aliens…

Now we are learning that our mothers were correct.

Maybe those “old wives” knew what Hippocrates said:

Leave your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you can heal the patient with food.

Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food.

Or maybe they read Maimonides:

Let nothing which can be treated by diet be treated by other means.

Or maybe they knew this Chinese proverb:

He that takes medicine and neglects diet wastes the skill of the physician.

Whatever knowledge they had — those old wives, our parents, or grandparents — they seemed to understand a lot about nutrition.

But today’s “food” isn’t always food

The nutritious peach I ate as a kid no longer exists — I’d now have to eat so many more to get that same nutrition, that I’d spend all day eating peaches.

Ditto most other foods…..

Those “vine-ripened” tomatoes still on that vine in the store? Hmm — yes they may have ripened on the vine but was that vine still attached to the plant? Or did they ripen in a truck while being shipped to your store? Legal word games for consumers to ponder….. Big Agra knows we have heard that vine-ripened is better — you decide.

Me? I've tasted them.

I’ve tasted a lot of store-bought tomatoes and decided that most have the taste appeal of cardboard —

and yes — I actually tried cardboard.

What has happened?

Over the years we have depleted the soil — and our environment is more toxic than it was, food is more processed, usually picked before it is ripe, and in many homes often cooked to death. We added all sorts of “stuff” to keep food preserved for shelf life in the grocery stores, or allegedly to make them taste better. We added “stuff” like preservatives, antioxidants, color fixatives, thickening agents, sweeteners, binders, and anti-caking additives, etc.

Some of these food additives are also used in perfume, varnish, embalming fluid, jet fuel, cosmetics, and drugs — yes these are in your foods!

The U.S. and other governments allow for certain levels of the above additives [and others] to be in our foods; they call the levels “generally recognized as safe.”

Are all these preservatives necessary? If you look at canned organic foods, the labels do not contain all or even most of the usual additives. Why? Aren’t they both canned and preserved? Aren’t they on the same shelves in the same kinds of stores? The answer to this is a different kind of article about food and money — but that’s for another time.

Food? Or chemicals?

There was a period of time when we went full-scale low-fat and no-fat. But that made food taste pretty awful, so we added chemicals and “stuff” to make it taste better. Thankfully, we have now removed most of the worst kinds of “stuff” and now more people are buying as organic as possible. The big stores have caught on and there are organic “sections” and/or foods in many chain supermarkets — because it’s all about the money [duh]….

But organic foods are still grown in soils that have been depleted over the years and our air is still toxic. I know organic farmers and they are improving the soil — but can it ever be as good as it was? I simply don’t know.

I recall driving by an organic farm in New England that was right alongside the main road. That road was salted and had chemicals spread on it every winter to help make it safe for driving. Every Spring the snowmelt and rain washed the salts and chemicals onto the fields where organic foods were going to be planted, grown, AND certified. It made me really think about words, labels, and foods…..

Given all the negatives about our food supply, is there anything we can do to get better nutrition, the nutrition we actually need? In short, yes — we can add supplements to our diet. But even that is not a simple answer. Not all supplements are good for you. There is growing evidence that synthetic supplements may not help — and — they may be harmful.

Our bodies prefer food — they are designed to digest and utilize food — not chemicals. Synthetic vitamins are made in laboratories — some using petroleum extracts and coal tar derivatives, etc.

Just as I prefer the foods I eat to have no added chemicals and “stuff” in them — I prefer my vitamins and supplements to not have them either! What’s the point of eliminating all that “stuff” from your foods if you put it back in your system via vitamins and supplements.

My vitamins and supplements are made of food — and are as organic as possible — they provide me nutrients not always found in today’s food.

For the 21st Century, and for my growing older self, I prefer the “new” nutrition.

Yes, the foods and supplements in this “new” nutrition cost more, but to paraphrase an old ad:

I am worth it!