Why Organic & Why Whole Foods?

“Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.” [Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are].

 The French coined the saying “Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are.”  We just make it simple and say: “You are what you eat!”   And it’s true.  Whatever you drink, chew and swallow has the potential of being used in any cell throughout the entire body.  Even more importantly, the food you eat will serve as the fuel in keeping the body alive and functioning properly.

While common sense generally tells us that if you don’t eat well you won’t feel all that great, let’s take a look at a few reasons why it’s important to eat good food and what that means. 

The organic farming story starts when we moved away from traditional farming practices during the Industrial Revolution.  This period in history brought with it advances in technology that has since evolved all aspects of modern life, including what we eat.  New technology allowed farmers to work more land, produce higher yields and feed more people.  As the science of farming grew, we discovered more about how to fertilize and how to fight pests.

100 or so years later, we are now facing the problems of trying to grow food affordably to feed the masses.  The root of our problem starts with the soil; we often think of the Earth as a big ball of dirt floating through space but the reality is that only a relatively thin layer of topsoil can support plant life.  The nutrients in that soil have existed for millions of years in perfect balance to each other...plants grow and die, and their trunks, stems and leaves give back to the soil the nutrients they borrowed during life.  With industrial farming, those nutrients are pulled from the soil in corn, potatoes, carrots or any other vegetable and transported off to market.  Modern farmers discovered very quickly that without replacing those minerals, plants would not grow.

One of the differences between organic and non-organic farming methods addresses how farmers can fix used up soil.  Industrial farmers add synthetic fertilizers to the dirt in specific ratios they know will help grow their veggies.  This lets them grow the same type of crop on the same square of land year after year.

Organic farmers must take a different approach.  Organic farmers cannot use a drop of synthetic fertilizer (thank you!).  They must combine traditional methods with modern technology to grow as many crops as possible on the same size land.  They do this in several ways; for starters, they rotate the types of crops they grow in a certain field.  Carrots might never be grown in the same field two years in a row, and inbetween seasons organic farmers plant some variety of grass seed to bring nitrogen from the air and put it back in the soil naturally.  Then they chop the cover crop and turn it back under the soil.  And of course, organic farmers don’t use pesticides.

What this means for you in the grocery store is that while there has been no science to prove that organic foods taste better (though I argue they do) there is extensive science to show that organic foods are not only pesticide free but also have all the nutrients and minerals our body needs to stay optimally healthy.  The industrial carrot may look like a carrot and it may taste like a carrot but it’s an empty harvest missing all the health for a healthy food.

THIS is where whole food supplementation directly from an organic farm becomes extremely important.  We can supplement our American diet with foods packed full of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients so we can glow from the inside out.

Interested in reading more about the uses and myths surrounding whole food supplementation? Check out this blog!