Eat well to live well

Isn’t it about time that we eat food the way it was intended? We have been living in a testing ground for chemicals. The food in the grocery stores has been grown with chemicals and so much of the food that is boxed is full of chemicals. When picking up a box of cereal, cookies, crackers, even chips, look for the ingredient list.

If you can’t read the words without stumbling over them, don’t buy the food. Forget the sodium percentage or fat content, try to read what else is put in the food. Hydrogenated oils are trans fats and are not good for you, don’t but them. When I was doing food tasting, sometimes my instructions were to buy hydrogenated margarine and cook the food samples in said margarine. I would buy butter instead and cook the fish or whatever in butter.

One night, I was watching W5 and the story was about Basa fillets (fish). Basa seems to come primarily from Asia where the fish is farmed. Farmed fish are prone to parasites, so a heavy chemical called malachite green is used to keep the parasites under control. The problem is that we end up eating the chemical which stays in the fish. I called up the company I worked for and said that I would not serve that fish ever. Safeway was hosting the Tasting of Basa in a couple of days. Apparently someone from Safeway saw the W5 story and the Basa taste testing was cancelled. Basa fillets are still sold in all the grocery stores, nothing was ever really done to make the fish safe for consumers.

As long as the food manufacturers are making a lot of money, there is little concern or care for those consumers. In Europe, chemicals are taken out of the food because the European consumers know healthy food has no chemicals.

I read a really fascinating book called, ‘The Secret Life of Plants’. That book convinced me that plants have a special energy that can keep us in tip top shape providing the plants are not grown with chemicals. Nutrients and minerals are sadly lacking when the plants are grown using artificial fertilizers and chemicals.

Ever hear of Max Gerson? He grew up in Germany and noticed that farmers fields which used no chemicals had a lot of activity. The worms would move the soil around, turn the soil, so to speak. The farmers who used chemicals in their fields to induce growth, lacked worms; the worms would crawl out of those chemically infested fields! Max Gerson discovered that the soil lacked the nutrients needed to grow healthy food.
So Max became a doctor and he placed his sick patients on organically grown food. All his patients began to get better. He gained quite a reputation. Now Max was living in Germany during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hitler caught wind of this fine doctor and began to follow Max’s suggestions. Hitler’s crew came on board and began to eat natural, organic food. However, I guess Hitler did not want the world to be healthy and Max’s family was rounded up and exterminated. Max escaped and ended up in the U.S.

Max continued his fine work in New York city, but came under scrutiny of the New York medical board. Many of his patients testified how disease--free they became upon following doctor’s orders. When Max attempted to open his own hospital, he was told that the only recognized treatment for cancer and other ills was radiation and chemotherapy. He was barred from opening his healthy alternative. So he opened one in Mexico.

Do you see how we have been blocked from being healthy? Drugs are so promoted and placed in our food. Thankfully there are alternative solutions. We must return to eat food that our grandparents grew. There are still many farms which grow chemically free food, but not organically certified. However, there are still a lot that believe the lies that the chemicals sprayed on the fields do not affect the consumer. Check out the farmers growing food with chemicals. How healthy are they? Many of them have gotten sick with all kinds of health problems. Hmmmm! These farmers are getting the freshest food available. They should really be the picture of health.

I have a cousin up in the Peace country (north of Edmonton) who raises organic Bison. He has a thousand acres and the Bison roam and eat. He grows his own winter grasses for his herd. My cousin told me that most of the farmers around him use lots of chemicals on their fields. He said there is a lot of hostility to the farmers (like him) who have pesticide free fields. Why would the chemical farmers resent anyone not using chemicals? I don’t get it.

How would you like to watch a great expose of the food industry, from cattle lots to processed food? Then go out and rent ‘Food Inc’. My granddaughter and I saw this movie/documentary last summer. Although she was only eight years old at the time, Holly has become very aware of what is healthy to eat and what is not.

By the way, if you do decide to eat organic, please don’t microwave your food. The microwave zaps about 98% of all nutrients, so you might feel full but you will still be hungry. Digestive enzymes so necessary are missing as well. The radiation used to heat you food will find its way to your pancreas, not a good thing. Have you noticed more people suffering from pancreatic cancer?

What I do a few times a week is juice. I used to juice with fruits and vegetables all the time. Now that I have gone organic, I have noticed a difference.
Organic fruits and vegetables fill me up. Regular fruits and vegetables (usually I use 5 or 6 different kinds) made better tasting juices than store bought juices. However, organic juices fill me up for a couple of hours. I never had that feeling of fullness prior to drinking organic.

I heard a doctor mention (on Oprah) that if food prices are going down, usually health care costs (medication etc.) go up. He said shouldn’t we pay more for food and less for health care. If we eat good, healthy food, we may not need all those expensive medications. When I worked in all those group homes, I talked to so many of the residents about their diets, past and present. I never ran across anyone who ate healthy who was sick!!

In the seventies, I attended The University of Guelph. Guelph has a veterinary college at the university. In the lone Genetics course I took, the professor discussed antibiotics in all the cattle feed. We had a tour of the animal facilities and further discussion revealed the feed also contained other animals. Cows are vegetarians, why would this happen? Part of the feed also contained growth hormones, to make the cows gain weight. Guess what happens when humans eat such tainted meat? They get the growth hormones in their systems.

Is it any wonder that there are serious weight issues in North America?


I was always getting asked about my ability to stay healthy and to look good. I was asked these questions by people around my age who were literally falling apart. The more chemicals they took into their system, the more health issues they had. It seems simple to me. Eat well to live well.