July 2011
Monthly Archive
How Healthy is Milk?
In my last post The Health of Our Meat, I took the meat industry by the horns and spoke a few home truths! Well, now its the turn of the dairy industry, as if you aren’t still reeling from all this stunning knowledge!
Most of us in the West have grown up on cow’s milk and its derivatives such as yoghurt, cream, butter and cheese, but is it as good for you as the so-called experts keep telling us? Well, not to deflate you any more after learning that meat and vegetables are not up to scratch, but there are one or two thing you need to know about cow’s milk and what use it is in our daily diet. After reading this, you might change your own views on the need to even continue consuming dairy produce in adulthood.
First out of the gate is the well documented fact that we humans, as adults actually can’t metabolize cow’s milk and the lactose it contains very well. In fact many of us are actually lactose intolerant, meaning those people can’t metabolize it at all and when they consume it, they suffer with quite debilitating symptoms.
But we hear from the industry that promotes it that it is necessary to enrich our diet with much needed calcium.
The fact that we need calcium for strong healthy teeth and bones is true, but we don’t get it from cow’s milk, because we can’t metabolize it very well, remember? The truth is that we derive most of our calcium from green leafy vegetables. We can metabolize them perfectly well and get all the nutrients we need easily, because that’s the way our bodies are designed to work.
It gets worse. If you’re squeamish, look away now…
The cows that provide the milk are pumped full of steroids, growth hormones and antibiotics, as you will have gleaned from my last post. Well, those nasties find their way into the cow’s milk, and are not destroyed during the pasteurization process. So we get to consume these hormones and antibiotics which of course reduce the effectiveness of our own natural immune system’s defenses.
So there are just a few reasons not to consume dairy products, or at least cut down on them drastically. A glimmer of hope lies in the organic food industry as organically reared dairy cows are not fed all these antibiotics and hormones, but access to organic dairy produce is still not as widespread as it could be, but it is improving.
Remember, one billion Chinese have practically no dairy produce in their diets and they’re pretty healthy despite its absence!
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The Health of Our Meat
The last post here, The Health of Our Crops, looked at the crop farming industry and how organic farming can turn things around with regards our health and wellness. So here, I’ll look at the benefits of eating organically produced meat and poultry.
First, let’s look at what we already know about intensively farmed livestock. Knowing exactly what is in your food can make a big difference to your overall health. Cows and pigs, which are herbivores, are fed with protein rich feed that can also contain ground up flesh and bones of dead farmyard animals. If this isn’t bad enough, they are also regularly fed a diet rich in growth hormones and antibiotics which make the animals reach maturity much faster than they would naturally.
These force-grown animals see little of the beautiful fields that we associate with grazing animals. They spend nearly all of their miserable and thankfully short lives in small pens where their movements are restricted to prevent them from harming themselves and others. For this read to avoid damaging the supermarket shrink wrapped and neatly packaged meat they will become. Poultry are kept in tiny cages for similar reasons and are also fed steroids, growth hormones and a cocktail of antibiotics to prevent the infections that would surely wipe out so many birds kept in such close quarters.
Ok, if this is staring to sound like an animal rights tirade, I apologize. It’s just the plain old truth. And no one likes to hear that, do they!
Well guess what their organically raised cousins get. Yep, they get to roam around the farmyard and graze in those fields, at least having a life before being shipped off to the abattoir. They also are not pumped full of hormones and antibiotics as they lead a more healthy lifestyle.
Now which meat would you rather take home from the supermarket and feed to your family? The cheaper stuff that still contains residues of all those hormones and antibiotics, knowing how those animals were treated before their miserable existences were snuffed out? Or the more expensive organic stuff that is just meat?
Not only that, but which do you imagine might be the more healthy choice for your family’s diet?
Oh yeah, no contest! In my next post I’ll ruffle a few more feathers with a look at how healthy the dairy industry is.
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The Health of Our Crops
The last post, Healthy Despite It All, took a swipe at what is wrong with the farming industry and the food that is produced for our tables. It also looked at solutions that are available in organic farming practices. So in this post, let’s carry this subject further here.
With better soil to grow in and far fewer chemicals to leech into their flesh, organically grown vegetables herald in an era where slowly but surely, farmers are realizing that they can return to traditional farming methods whilst still employing modern technology to make it all easier.
Transforming previously intensively farmed land back to organic methods takes time and several years may need to pass before it can certified organic. This is because chemicals that used to be sprayed on the crops and were therefore dissolved into the soil have to dissipate either with rainfall or being naturally broken down by the re-introduction of organic matter and good bacteria and fauna. But in the interim, the farmer can still work the soil and gradually produce better and healthier crops year upon year.
Organically grown fruit and vegetables not only contain more nutrients than their starved intensively grown cousins, but they also taste better as there is no chemical residue to taint the flavor. That makes them better for us and our general health. Of course, the agriculture industry are swift to counter any claims that their produce does contain any chemical residues, but come on, we are intelligent human beings and we know what our own common sense tells us. We know that organic food is far healthier for us and our families, there can be no argument about that!
But there is also organically farmed meat and poultry to consider in this healthy equation, and it is that which I’ll be looking at in my next post.
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Healthy Despite It All
In this post, I’d like to talk about how we can stay healthy despite it all. By that I mean how we as a race manage to remain healthy even though we are fed on a diet of food that is mass produced, full of potentially harmful artificial additives and deficient in many of the essential vitamins and minerals that we need.
The mineral and nutrient deficiency in the vast majority of food that we buy is a serious problem that the enlightened amongst us can do quite a lot about. First thing that needs to happen is for more people to stand up and tell the food industry that this is just not good enough. Unfortunately, the food industry as a whole is extremely powerful and has a veritable army of PR people who are very good at swaying public opinion away from the important issues. They have managed to force the US Congress to U turn on several additive bans and health issues over the decades, such is their reach and power of persuasion.
You have to see past this.
A minor revolution that is going to be good for the general health of people is already happening in the farming industry with smaller, breakaway farmers returning to traditional farming methods and turning their backs on the lethal cocktails of chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc that intensive farming methods employ. They are, instead, turning to organic farming methods that drastically cut the need for the vast majority of these chemicals. They are once again treating the soil with the respect it deserves and being repaid with healthier crops that are regaining their nutrient levels.
This is extremely good news for you and your family’s health.
It means that you can buy organically grown fruit and vegetables that are virtually free of chemicals (the UK Soil Association allows a maximum of 6 chemical pest control substances to be used on crops that can then be labeled “organic”). This will help us to stay healthy from the inside out.
By using natural organic matter to enrich the soil (instead of chemical fertilizer) the friendly bugs along with the worms return to play their part in the overall scheme of things. Together, this produces healthier crops that taste better, leading to healthy eating and a better chance of enjoying better overall health.
The downside is they cost more, but what price are you going to place on your children’s health? I reckon its a price well worth paying.
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Using Detox Kits Helps Maintaining Your Health
Many health problems these days are directly or indirectly caused by accumulation of man made toxins in our bodies. Every time factories pollute the air, or release their waste in the waters, we are exposed to the waste. Not necessarily directly, but as the water gets polluted the crops that are watered get polluted. When the air is no longer clean, the air we are breathing is not clean, and neither is the rain that waters the plants we eat, and the plats the animals we eat, eat. This puts a dramatic stress on our bodys’ detoxification systems, and the modern day nutritional habits can’t cope up with this.
Most people are fundamentally against eating vitamin supplements and using herbal supplements to help maintain their health. They say that “a versatile diet is all I need”. The problem is that most of these people don’t eat a versatile diet, and because our vegetables are power-grown we no longer get enough vitamins and minerals from them. Most of the fruits we eat are imported, and they are picked from the trees when they still are raw. They don’t develop as much antioxidants as they should, and as a result, we don’t get enough antioxidants from them. This is where using a body detox kit on a regular basis will come in to the picture.
As we are exposed to more toxins than our bodies can handle, and our detoxification systems lack the necessary elements to function at full power, we need to supply the system and avoid possible pollution. Unfortunately most of the pollution is unavoidable, and even in remote areas of the north pole, we can find chemicals that have travelled there airborne. So all we can do is detoxify, detoxify and detoxify. What do we need to detox properly? We need vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. We might also need specific natural compounds which boost our liver detoxification pathways. These can be a key in a detox program, and between these perhaps week long programs, one should supply the body with enough vitamins, minerals and antioxidants to keep the process going.
The body is a complex system, and going in to details on how one can benefit from detox kits can be too much for the scope of this medium. What I do want to emphasize is that when you get rid of your waste more efficiently, your body will have more power to burn fat and keep your immune functions working properly. Also when harmful estrogens leave your body, the risk for diseases such as cancer reduce. And when you lose weight, you are less likely to get diabetes or CVD.
