It was when the banana liquified inside its skin and oozed a pale slime out onto the fruit basket that I decided it was time to look for organic vegetables and fruits. But this banana had traveled from Central America to Dubai where I was living. Standards for what is “organic” aren’t consistently defined in the U.S.–forget about it internationally!
Giving up bananas was my only option, and I always selected produce that had traveled the shortest distances, vegetables and fruits from Jordan, Syria, and Iran were preferable to U.S., European or Australian imports. (This is a desert nation where virtually all food is imported.) The conditions of the soils and use of chemicals in growing food in other nations was unknown, but in the “processed” department the foreign operations were far superior to American. Fruit juice contained–vola! the fruit–only! No high fructose corn syrup to sweeten it up and fatten us up.
High fructose corn syrup–everywhere!
Barbara Kingsolver writes in Animal,Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life that the average American daily diet has an extra 700 calories through the addition of high fructose corn syrup into many processed food products. Is it any wonder that the whole nation has pudged up with the dominance of prepared and processed foods on our plates?
We easily understand the relation between nutrient content of the vegetables and fruits and the soils they’re grown in, but it takes another mental leap to realize that the nutrient content of the animal products we eat is determined by what the chickens and cows are fed and their living conditions! A chicken that’s spent its entire life in a cage has stress hormones that effect the eggs it lays and the meat we roast.
This isn’t the place for a treatise on soils, but I recommend the book Secrets of the Soil by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird . The updated edition in 1998 reports the alarming statistics on the use chemical fertilizers worldwide. In the 1930s, a University of Missouri soil scientist said, “The wealth of a nation is determined by its top six inches of soil.” This is an eternal truth, for the soil grows the nation’s food, which determines our health. An unhealthy nation doesn’t prosper–we have plenty of examples worldwide.
Before chemical fertilizers were manufactured (beginning in the 1950s) the soil on family farms was tended and supported by rotating crops and using the livestock manure. It was the natural cycle of decomposition, renewal, and life. Now with huge corporate farms growing single crops (70 percent of U.S. farmland is in corn and soy beans–as Kingsolver says, “we’re one pathogen away from famine”) and heavy use of synthetic fertilizers the soil can’t support the life of organisms in the soil. The result is nutrient-poor soil.
Nutrients of 1950s produce and today’s
Donald R. Davis, Ph.D., at the Biochemical Institute of University of Texas-Austin, compared the data of nutrients in vegetables and fruits collected by the USDA in 1950 and again in 1999. Six out of 13 nutrients had declined, and seven showed no significant reliable change. As reported in a 2005 issue of Food Technology, the minerals phosphorus, iron and calcium declined between 9-16 percent. Protein was down 6%, riboflavin 38%, and ascorbic acid down 15%.
What does this mean to you and me? Well, you’d have to eat half a dozen peaches today to gain the nutrient content of ONE 1950 peach! Revitalizing the soils is the only solution, and family run farms are trying to do this. Growing evidence links organic production with higher levels of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2007) reported a 10-year study comparing organic tomatoes with conventional tomatoes. As organic matter accumulated in the plots, the nutrients in the organic produce rose to 79% higher levels of quercetin and 97% higher level of kaempferol, on average, above the conventionally grown crop.
The eggs in my refrigerator now are from hens raised without hormones and free-range (no cages), fed grains with no animal by-products. Their shells are thin, irregular in shape and color, but they have 25% less cholesterol than caged fowl, and they taste better! Organic milk misses the traces of 200 antibiotics found in ordinary milk. Even M.D.s are advising that if you buy only one item ORGANIC, make it milk. Meat and milk from pasture-raised, grass-fed animals cotain greater levels of beneificial fatty acids including omega-3, alpha-linolenic acid, and conjugated linoleic acid. The animals live better, and so do we!
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
