FOUR easy steps to start eating REAL FOOD now!

The health of the human race and the earth is declining rapidly, and it's time we do something about it.  We are ruining our soil by raising cattle in feed lots where they spend their days standing in their own waste and breathing the stench of it, while eating food that their bodies were not designed to digest.  

We are planting massive amounts of genetically modified corn, soybeans, and cotton and then spraying it with chemicals so the soil yields more food. Then the water runs off the soil in the lakes and streams and we drink it while pregnant, and give it to our babies.

We genetically modify plants so they will produce fruits that last longer, that resist being eaten by bugs, and can be planted closer together to produce more in a smaller area of land.  We spray our fruits and vegetables with poison so bugs don't eat it.  Then we eat it.

We eat mostly things that 100 years ago our great grandparents wouldn't have recognized as food.  We follow trends and believe the marketing and packaging on "food".

We also have unprecedented numbers of children with autism, ADHD, and behavior problems, more people with cancer than ever before, rampant mental illness, infertility, crooked teeth, and obesity galore.

When will we all see the connection between what we put into and onto our bodies and what health problems we have?

It seems depressing, but it's not hopeless.  What you do today makes a HUGE impact!

What can we do today to reduce the number of poisons we expose ourselves and our children to?  What can we do to make sure there is healthy soil for our grandchildren to grow food and feed animals?

Step ONE:

Buy only organic fruits and vegetables This has an impact not only on your body, but on the earth.  Have you ever thought about WHERE the pesticides go once they are sprayed on the fruit or vegetables?  You eat some of them, and the rest are left in the soil and in the water that runs off the soil and into our oceans, lakes, and streams, where our children play.

Especially avoid: non-organic strawberries, apples, nectarines, peaches, celery, grapes, cherries, spinach, tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, and kale/collard greens.  These were found by the Environmental Working Group to be the most pesticide-laden produce items.

Step TWO:

Check food labels Avoid anything that isn't food.  Plant oils are not meant as food in large quantities.

According to nutritionist Barbara Solomon, "vegetable oils contain mostly heat-sensitive polyunsaturated fats. When heated, these fats turn into toxic compounds, ie: trans fat. So even if it doesn’t say it on the label, it’s there! Due to their structure, saturated fats are able to resist a heat-related damage called oxidation because they do not have any room for oxygen to squeeze in."

Avoid: vegetable oil, canola oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, any hydrogenated oils Instead: use butter, ghee, lard from pastured pigs, beef tallow, duck fat, coconut oil, olive oil or avocado oil

Avoid: non-organic sugar, artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols. Instead: Choose raw honey, organic dried cane juice or organic maple syrup instead.

Avoid: breakfast cereals (the process of making them breaks down the grains, so you're better off eating cardboard, and they are basically just empty calories anyway) Instead: Make homemade organic oatmeal with lots of butter, or homemade granola, or eggs and bacon

Step THREE:

Buy pastured eggs, grass-fed beef, and pastured pork and chicken Grass-fed and grass-finished beef cattle are raised on grass, as they were intended.  The cost is more because it's more expensive to raise cattle on pasture then locked up in a pen being fed the soy-meal byproducts of making soybean oil.  The fat from beef raised on grass is actually good for you, unless the fat from soy-fed pen-raised cows. Pastured chickens get to run around and eat grass, bugs, and scraps, along with their chicken feed, and they get to dust bathe and act like chickens.  Chickens love to lay in the sun, and also run and flap their wings.  Organic eggs from "free-range" chickens are okay, but they are no doubt fed soy, which is on the avoid list.  The chickens are often only kept indoors in a crowded barn with room to roam on the ground.  Better, but not ideal.  A lot of people who think they are allergic to eggs are actually allergic to the soy protein which passes to the eggs from the feed the hens eat.

Step FOUR:

Buy organic, non-homogenized WHOLE milk, preferably RAW, from a dairy you trust.  Homogenizing milk changes the fat molecules so they no longer float.  In milk that hasn't been processed, the cream floats on top.  Avoid low fat, skim and non-fat milk.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff.  I'm kind of depressed now. What should I do first?

It's really okay. Just take it one step at a time.  Change one food item today, and replace one body care product and one home care product this week.  Get rid of Roundup and tell your gardener to stop using it.  Then, next week replace another 2 items.

NEXT STEP:

If you haven't already, download my totally free Real Food Resource List - find out where I buy ethically raised, organic food and why.