Make no mistake, we’re fully on board with letting food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, but, just as you wouldn’t take just any medicine and hope it will help heal what ails you, you shouldn’t take just any food, either. Too often we’re eating on the run, or while working, or we just takes bites of something here and there during a busy day. When that’s happening, the quality of the food decreases. Here’s why caring about your food’s quality matters:
- Toxins are everywhere, even in our food supply, and when we’re exposed to more than our systems can remove we end up with chronic symptoms like fatigue and difficulty sleeping, indigestion, food cravings and inability to manage weight, brain fog, low libido, skin issues, and joint discomfort to name a few.
- Toxic materials that make their way into our food include additives and preservatives, heavy metals, pesticides and herbicides, and other industrial chemicals. Over 800 millions pounds of herbicide is applied to our food supply annually; it’s tough to avoid.
So how do we avoid them? This is where carefully choosing your food comes into play. First, processed foods are much higher in toxic materials than fresh foods because the very act of processing the foods requires the use of toxic materials from start to package. Limiting the intake of foods that come in cans or boxes, regardless of how “natural” the packaging claims it is, is a good start.
Next, selecting produce that was grown organically
will help keep the volume of toxic exposure down. It can be tough to feed everyone in a household all organic foods, so to help with budget and decision making on this front, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) releases an annual list called the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” that details the most treated crops, so you know which ones to absolutely always buy organic, and 15 least treated, so you know which ones you can maybe get away with buying conventionally grown versions.
As for meat and seafood, be mindful of what those animals consumed and where they lived out their lives. The meat we eat may have been fed the very foods we avoid eating ourselves, which means the animals may not have been all that healthy and that they’re passing on whatever toxins their bodies were unable to excrete. There’s no cause for panic, though, because there are plenty of farmers and suppliers producing meat and seafood from sustainable sources. The EWG also maintains a list for this, as does the Weston A Price Foundation.
The more shoppers opt for clean sources of food, the more growers will see that’s where the demand lies. As more people insist on non-toxic foods, more farms will supply them and we’ll be well on our way to healing our soil, our crops and our bodies!