Nourishing the Body: The lack of quality in our modern food system

We all know it’s important to eat healthy right? We know that choosing to eat whole, organic foods and getting a variety of fruits and vegetables is way better for us then a take out meal filled with chemical preservatives, right? Or eating an apple is better choice than snacking on a bag of Doritos.

So then why is it that eating healthy and well can sometimes be so hard to do?

This isn’t as straightforward as you might think it should be. It’s way beyond someone being addicted to sugar and reaching for a calorie loaded piece of cake rather than a fruit or vegetable.

Let’s take a look at the our modern food system and how it impacts our health.

We live in a world where our food system has changed drastically over the past century. Although some advances in technology have been helpful, definitely not all of the changes have been good and some have been downright destructive, thanks to the push towards big-scale farming and the heavy use of chemicals.

Think of it like this: large fields growing just one thing, sucking the life out of the soil, and inviting pests for an all-you-can-eat buffet. Meanwhile, farmers are armed with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, turning their fields into a chemical battleground. Part of the reason why so many synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are used is that so more can be grown both faster and larger. The motivation behind this is the push for profit. Being able to produce larger quantities of food faster in our modern society means bigger profit margins for the industry.

Let’s take something like a tomato for example. Two tomatoes make look very similar, but one grown organically from non-GMO seeds holds way more nutritional density than tomatoes grown in a chemical cocktail designed to make them grow faster and larger. There is a huge difference in the nutritional value of these two items that look very similar but are not.

About a year ago, my family invested in an indoor growing system where I grow lots of my own produce organically from non-GMO seed. There is an enormous difference in the taste, nutritional value and in some cases size of the lettuces, herbs, celery, tomatoes, peppers etc that I grow indoor compared to anything you can find in the grocery stores. You can literally taste and feel the difference that is making in your body.

A fascinating book that goes deep into the topic of our food system and how the quality has declined rapidly over the past 50 or so years is The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker. It explores the many negative impacts of this on our health and sheds light on the obesity epidemic, even when someone is supposedly eating healthy.

Another great book on this topic is The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David A.. Kessler. This book exposes the food industry and how our brains are chemically hijacked by the foods we love to eat most – food s that contain stimulating combinations of fat, sugar and salt.

The modern food system is set up to sabotage you against being healthy. It’s largely designed to make you fat and sick. Processed food designed to get you addicted to the right combinations of fat, sugar and salt is one way (think of the majority of aisles in the grocery store filled with boxed and bagged food with ingredient lists that are a mile long). In these foods, most of what you are getting is a bunch of chemicals that are toxic to your body, and high palatable and high calorie foods with very little if any nutritional value.

The second way the modern food system is set up to sabotage you against being healthy is though the low nutritional quality food (seriously, read the book The Dorito Effect, it’s eye opening). Your body is remarkably smart, and eating low nutritional quality healthy foods does not fully satisfy the body … your body will crave more so that it gets the appropriate amount of nutritional content to meet your living needs.

At the end of the month, I’ll be hosting a free webinar on Ditch the Roadblocks: How to Get Out of Your Way and Make Stuff Happen. In that workshop I’ll be touching on some elements related to health self sabotage, and the larger impact on how our “choices” influence our ability to gain momentum and move in the direction of whatever goals we have set for ourself or hinder or completely halt the process. Once you have an understanding of the factors at play, it’s much easier to get out of your own way and make stuff happen.

If you would like more information about that free workshop, details and registration is below.