Part Two: The Food we Eat

Hi guys,

I hope the last post wasn’t too depressing. But I think its stuff we need to talk about.

In that last post, I mentioned that the other thing I think we are really f$#king up (in addition to how we treat animals) is our food. How we grow it (in far away places and then have it shipped to us; grown in depleted soil with pesticides), how we eat it (in front of a computer; behind a desk; in the car; on the run), how little we really appreciate it (how often do we think about all the hands that “touched” our food or about the sacrifice of any animal we are eating), and how much crap we allow to be put into it (prepackaged shit-storms). It scares me, and it should scare you too, that a lot of what we put into our mouths isn’t good for us.

But when we are talking about our health, it’s not just the chemicals that we are putting into our food - it’s all the other toxins that we are poisoning ourselves with. There are hundreds of other toxins we expose ourselves to unknowingly (and knowingly) every single day. Think about all the various products you use on your body just getting ready in the morning: shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, face cleansers, makeup, perfume, toothpaste, etc. Then there are all the EMF’s (electromagnetic field) and environmental air pollutants floating around us! Yikes!

Hopefully you’re able to appreciate that our bodies have a lot to deal with (especially our liver) and that we need to do all we can to help our body. Here are two websites which may be of interest to you, if you'd like to look more closely at reducing toxins. The first one is the Environmental Working Group website. Here you can look up specific personal care items you use at home to see how they are rated, as well as find out what the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 are for your next grocery shopping trip. I realize that we can't buy organic food (I can't either) all the time, so this gives you some idea about where it's more "worthwhile" to pay the extra money for organics. Another great piece of advice here is to spend extra on the foods you eat more often. For example, if you eat a ton of strawberries you may want to buy them organic more often that not. On the other hand, if you only eat peaches and cherries a couple of times a year, those may not be worth buying organic. The other website I want to mention to you is called Food Babe and is full of information about anything related to food and toxins. (It's a bit extreme in my opinion, but take what you want from it). 

Health at its core comes down to reducing toxins and providing nutrition so that our bodies can function optimally. Generally speaking, our bodies are self-repairing and are designed to heal. We need to do our best to provide them with a healthy environment in which they can more readily do so, and much of this is done through our diet. 

Just over a year ago, I shared a website with you all called 100 days of Real Food. The concept is simple: eat real food. unpackaged. in moderation. And I am sharing it again here because this relates to what I am talking about here. If we eat this way, we are naturally reducing the amount of toxins we put into our bodies, while at the same time providing it with nutrient dense food. This makes me think of one of Michael Pollan’s famous quotes:

It shouldn’t be about following a particular way of eating, as much as it should be about feeding your body QUALITY food. If you like how your body feels on a certain type of plan (i.e. paleo, weight watchers, vegan, 21 day fix, etc). that's great -- just make sure that the food you are feeding yourself on that plan is high quality. Some people feel that it's too expensive to eat this way, but I feel that you cannot put a price on your health. Furthermore, viewing eating well as being too expensive is really shortsighted because if you don't create health now, you are setting yourself up for sickness later.