Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Food For Thought



Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs (5000 years ago) routinely lived into their 80’s. Back then most cultures were lucky to see 50.


In modern day there is an equally fascinating longevity trend found in the mountains of Pakistan, Russia, Ecuador and Peru, where people are seeing 120+.


What exactly is going on here? Life expectancy averages here in Western civilization are barely 80 and people rarely see 100. Aren’t we at a Medical advantage?


I think it comes down to what we put into our bodies that makes the difference.


Isn’t it remarkable that when you cut/scrape yourself that your body just goes about the business of clotting up the wound and replacing the cells? Our bodies are the result of eons of evolution and have been continually tuning themselves for the purpose of survival.


The human body is mostly water so what other nutrients/building-blocks are at its disposal, to rely on for this autonomous healing power?


After Carbon and Nitrogen we are chockfull of trace elements. Phosphorus, Potassium, Sulphur, Sodium, Chlorine, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc, Copper, Strontium, Bromine, Silicon, Fluorine...hell the list goes on forever.


Therefore it seems rational that keeping a good supply of these minerals may be a key to our well being. However we can’t absorb copper by chewing on a wire, as our bodies cannot absorb elements such as metals directly.


We need a medium, a plant for example, to absorb these things out of the ground so we can in turn ingest and derive the nutrients.


Unfortunately the vegetables in your grocery store are no longer filled with most minerals. You see you don’t need all of these elements to grow a tomato that looks and tastes like a tomato.


Vegetables are instead grown from soil that has long since been sucked dry of the multitude of rich minerals as farms really only need to replace the Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium to rear a crop. And so they do. They are after all...a business.


This brings us back to the Egyptians who planted their agriculture in the flood plains of the Nile River. Every spring the Ethiopian mountains would produce a melt that bore down all of this natural goodness across these very plains annually.


The other mountainous regions mentioned above are right at the “tap” of the irrigation bounty. Their water is so cloudy with nutrients that it has been dubbed “glacial milk”.


I watched the documentary Food Inc. the other day and it just solidified my concerns over the quality of our food. Perhaps the rising rates in asthma, autism and diabetes have their roots in what is stoking our fires. Perhaps we look like tomatoes....but we too are woefully short on ingredients.


It’s common to hear stories of mothers-to-be having wild food cravings. Is this a body’s innate reaction to lacking nutrients needed to satisfy the leeching child?


You know a horse will eat the wood in its stall if you do not give it a block of salt to lick. That animal needs something in its system and on some very elemental level it will bite and gnaw everything in sight until it gets it.


Time for me to take my daily vitamins!


-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great!

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