Four Ways Industrial Ag is Destroying the Soil—and Your Health.
Modern farming is depleting the soil of it’s nutrients, resulting in less nutrients in our food, resulting in less nutrients in our bodies, resulting in more health problems. This is the main reason most people in the field of nutrition (who stay current on food science) recommend supplements and usually buy organic.
Unfortunately, supplements may not be enough of the good stuff and may be too much of the bad stuff. Nobody really knows for sure. But for now I have decided to take a multi-mineral every day to help replace some of the minerals that are lacking in my diet, even thought my diet is pretty healthy. I also take a few vitamins regularly, mostly Vitamin D3 and E (with tocopherols and tocotrienols, the complete E). If I am catching a cold, I will take 500 mgs of a good Vitamin C with flavonoids, and maybe some extra zinc.
Aside from vitamins and minerals, I also believe in supplementing with a probiotic and prebiotic. For those of you who don’t know what these are, a probiotic is a supplement of billions of “good” bacteria that promote a healthy gastrointestinal system. And a prebiotic is the “food” these good bacteria ingest to survive and proliferate.
The study of probiotics and the human biome (the trillions of bacteria that inhabit the body and are intertwined with every body system) is exploding with great new information. It appears that we are made of bacteria more than anything else. We have more bacteria than actual cells. And these bacterium need to be kept in balance and in large enough consistent amounts for us to stay healthy.
Since the beginning of life, we maintained a healthy biome by eating foods that were fermented , a natural process which produces lots of great bacteria for us. We also spent much of our time outside, and worked in the fields of dirt where bacteria thrive and got on us and in us.
But in the recent, oh say 50 years or so, a lot of things have changed so that we don’t get as much of these good “bugs”as we used to- and our health is definitely showing it. We over-farm the same plots of land, which as this article points out, depletes the ground of minerals and causes our food to have lower vitamin and mineral content. We use lots of things that kill too much bacteria, like antibiotics and antibacterial soap ( I would also assert that certain immunizations may a play a role in this too). We eat too much processed or pasteurized food that doesn’t contain any of these natural bacterium. We don’t breastfeed our babies as much or for as long as we used to, which is an important source of bacteria. We smoke, we drink alcohol, we take medications that strip our guts of bacteria and damage the lining of the intestinal tract. We are barraged by 100′s of thousands of new man-made chemicals that also either kill the bacteria or damage our detoxification systems. And we live in temperature-controlled, bleach-cleaned houses that are too sterile for anything to survive- including us.
Whether we like it or not, we need to get dirty again. And we need to nourish our soils in order to nourish ourselves. So get back outside and let your kids get dirty, Â get rid of your antibacterial soaps and ask your grandmother for her favorite canning recipes. And support your local farmers and organic farmers who work hard to replace the nutrients in their dirt. It may cost a little more to buy that organic or pesticide-free produce, but it is definitely less than what you will pay down the road to the oncologist or heart surgeon. Mother earth and your gut will be eternally grateful.