Recently, increasing awareness around food is causing a shift in the way we look at what we put on our plates. There is a shift toward consumption of organically grown produce, grass fed and free-range meat, which are both very important to our health. But is simply buying a product because it's organic essentially good for you?
During one of my trips to the Park Slope food coop, I heard a customer asking where she can find the organic gummy bears. A simple tour down the aisle of any organic store will prove that although we shifted our awareness, we haven't necessarily changed our eating habits. We still pretty much love sugars (artificial/processed or not), we prefer convenience, and if our favorite potato chips are now fried with organic oils - all the better. Nutrition is understood to be a caloric, mathematical equation that matters only to those of us who care about our waistlines.
Snacks and processed food are still snacks and processed food even if they're organic.
Our digestive system was designed to digest food found in nature like vegetables and meat. But the more we remove ourselves and the food we eat from nature, the more it becomes harder to digest. Is it possible that we gain weight because the body doesn't know how to break down processed foods?
Refined sugars, soy and corn are found in almost every processed food product, yet they are the hardest for the body to breakdown. They do not provide nutrition such as vitamins, minerals and natural fats which our body desperately needs to build cells and to function. As a result, we feel fatigue, our metabolism slows down, and we hope that an artificially made chemical vitamin pill will fill the gap.
Food is the fuel of our body. If the fuel is bad, what's the point of having a nice car? it's just going to break down and need repair.
If we maintain a healthy, balanced diet that consists of natural foods and nutrients, and eliminate processed food, this machine called "body" will not require a doctor.It's possible to prevent disease and even reverse its course by changing eating habits. Just cutting out processed and unnatural substances would make a big difference.The difference will be immediate and noticeable in the levels of energy and alertness.