WHAT ARE WE REALLY EATING ??????

It's 1954. Mom and Dad ant the kids are sitting down to Sunday dinner after church. The meat and potatoes have been simmering in the slow cooker accompanied by sliced up onions and carrots. Bread and butter and pickles add to the meal. After the main course, Mom produces a layer cake with chocolate frosting.

What was wrong with this picture, and is it even worse now?

Well, it might have been okay if the potatoes and carrots and onions came from the family garden. There is a good chance they did. Bread was already at the point of almost no nutrients because of "refining" flour and adding back a chemical version of just two or three of the nutrients that had been refined out! Butter later came to have a bad name, but we know now that it is infinitely preferable, in moderation, to trans-fatty acids that are found in homogenized fats like margarine. The cake might have been made with lard or butter (both animal fats and thus saturated) or, much worse, our great "health breakthrough", vegetable shortening. The idea was right. Vegetable fats would have been much better IF they hadn't been homogenized to be solids. Homogenizing causes the formation of trans-fatty acids. Yes, in your milk too.

What is so bad about trans-fatty acids? They are an unnatural formation of nutrients that are foreign to nature and thus, to us. Our bodies don't know what to do with them, and they either excrete them entirely as bowel problems, or deposit them on the walls of our arteries and heart.

So what if our veggies are NOT from our garden? Especially in winter, when our veggies are imported from other countries, they are often grown in conditions that are illegal in the US. Like fertilized with human waste or banned chemical fertilizers and weed killers. A good plan is to eat mostly the veggies that are in season. And if you MUST have strawberries out of season, buy frozen ones that were raised and processed in the US. Or whatever area you live in. Use Farmer's markets and stands. Grow your own if you can.

The meat is a real problem. In 1954 there were no "safe handling" labels on the meat. A great deal of what we ate was produced locally. Today meat is a produced form cattle that are fed grains in over-abundance, growth hormones. antibiotics, and under abusive conditions which cause stress hormones in the end product .We all know about antibiotics, but celiac disease from grains is rising..

Organic foods are best, but they are expensive. If you can't afford them, then buy locally when you can. Any vegetables are better than none. Eat things in season. Your body seems to know and do better on them. Fat free milk is not homogenized. You can buy light cream and reconstitute whole milk without the trans-fatty acids.

There are un-refined sugar and salt available that still contain all the nutrients that refining discards.

When we went into mass truck-farming, and grain fields, we added chemical fertilizers and lost all the trace minerals we desperately need, like chromium, boron, magnesium, zinc, copper and all the others that we need for good vision and bones and general health. I urge you all to take a GOOD multi-vitamin in addition to your careful choice of foods. For Your Good Health!

Publisher's note: The author is a practicing alternative medicine practitioner, lecturer and columnist.

About the author:

Beverly Youngs is Editor/Publisher of Bev's Cyber Seniors at http:www.cyber-seniors.net. She is the authjor of health colums, horticulture columns as well as a science fiction novel.