WHAT IS HEALTHY?

How do we trust a food?

This is such an ironic timing for this page to be built...four days ago I ate a McDonalds Premium McWrap with grilled chicken...the lettuce tasted "dirty" and even gritty. I spent the night projectile vomiting for five hours and still am trying to recover.

Not an experience I recommend and I'm sure McDonalds executives would emphatically state they are doing their best to give us uncontaminated food. However, even if the dirty ditch water that held the bacteria had not been on the leaf, what else was on that leaf of what should have been "healthier" food.

I've met some interesting levels of this argument, one customer in his late 80's argues that we are living longer because our diets are better and we have less contamination with refrigeration and better laws. You have to agree with that thinking...however, what about the what we are eating with that leaf?

This is actually a photo I purchased for a chemical company I consulted for a few years back that put it on the cover of a training manual for passing pesticide exams. To the farms this was a positive representation but to the person who wants to eat that lettuce...hmmm

So what is healthy? Because the farmer will argue if the plant was full of insects and disease the customer would believe it was "not healthy to eat". And I certainly don't want to eat something with fungus growing on it...how about you?

But I don't want to eat a fungicide either.

So let's take several aspects of healthy:

1. The plant itself must be healthy - if we can raise it organically then that's critical, however, my wife made the comment that our garden was organic - I looked at her and asked her if she'd looked at the ditch water we were watering with ( I believe that is what made me so violently sick last weekend) so reality is it's very hard to get truly chemical free no matter what. AND, if you've ever gardened you know the pest and disease battle - at which point we may need limited chemical help.
2. Now we have a healthy plant but one that's contaminated with a chemical either from the water or the use to stop disease and insects. How do we flush that out and off the plant. Water and cleaning is just as critical to "Healthy food" as any other process.
3. What was the plant raised in soil wise? This is often ignored - we presume if it's organic labeled it's healthy. But if you look at hydroponic we get into an entire debate over the amount of vitamins a plant induced to grow in water will really transfer to our bodies.

And what about the vitamins and minerals farmed OUT of the soil and not replaced by proper plant rotation and soil restoration.

 

I know, we are getting more complicated by the moment but that is what this blog is about - how do we determine "healthy".