How on earth does buying locally grown produce and other foods effect us on a global scale?  After all, we’re just small town country folk. 

It’s simple really.  The less your food travels to you and the less you travel to it, the less pollution and eco-waste is pumped into our world and our bodies. 

The Great Travelling Head of Lettuce

Think of it this way.  A head of iceberg lettuce can be grown by a local farmer, then shipped 5,000km away to a processing plant where it is sold for it’s final destination to London England (yes this actually happens).  When all the mileage in fossil fuels and wear and tear on our highway system and other eco-pollution is added up for this “perishable” food item, the expense we pay as taxpayers and global residents is far greater than the nutritional value of this almost all water food.  When we could have just gone down the road to the local food shed on a Saturday morning and purchased the lettuce directly from the producer.  If we purchased locally, this would eliminate the middle man (or middle men), giving farmers a better price for their product.  It also eliminates certain global trade laws that allows Canada to purchase the same head of lettuce or other foods at a cheaper price from foreign distributors.  Local farmers are then undercut with this surface level “inexpensive” (remember the fossil fuels?) produce which has caused many home-grown farm boys and girls to have to shut down their family farms.  If that wasn’t bad enough Canada has strict regulations on how food is grown and what type of fertilizers, chemicals and sprays farmers are allowed to use to treat our produce.  Many developing countries (that we purchase from) can still spray what ever they feel like on their produce including the very harmful DDT which was banned in Canada in 1985.  Then as long as it’s not sprayed in Canada, we can import what ever is “cost effective” – forgetting about global effect, or our own precious health effect.  Having said that, you might want to consider purchasing a fruit and veggie cleaner.

Don’t Gas My Apples PLEASE

After the discovery of ethylene in 1924, fruit producers began to ship all sorts of table goodies like tomatoes, banana and apples all unripe.  These are then gassed at a regional gassing facilities near their destination.  Some of these varieties are even bred genetically to not ripen on their own but wait to be gassed and then heavily waxed so they look their best for our supermarket visuals.  Yummmmmm.  “Mommy, can I have some more ethylene gas please?”

So What Is The Cost?

The next time you go to your local market- be it organic or not; I’m sure you’ll take a moment to consider the price of what you’re eating.   Are grocery stores all that bad?  No, it’s kind of hard to get in your full daily servings of vegetables in the middle of winter.  Grocery stores have their purposes to supply us with off season foods.  They serve an even greater purpose if your grocer understands the importance of purchasing locally and brings in local produce during prime season.  Whether you buy from a road side stand or you pick up your foods from your grocery store, take a minute to look at where is comes from, read the label.  Where it was processed from and where it was packaged from are two different places.  Make sure it’s local, and then BUY IT!

Ah yes, this famous old adage. You heard your mother tell you over a million times when you were just a small pup. Is it true??? Somewhat, but not entirely as we were led to believe. Eating is one thing, but absorbing is another. So really we should say “Your Are What You Absorb”. There is a difference?!  Yes my friend there is, and the difference- it is a large one! You see what you eat must be absorbed or eliminated. You can have the most pristine diet, but coupled with a lagging digestive system you may be no better than the fellow who pounds back the hot wings and Big Macs. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, you’ll be a lot better than that guy. But you may not be receiving the optimal nutrition you thought you were getting. What is not digested and absorbed exists the body. Possibly leaving you deprived of nutrients, vitamins and minerals along the way. So how do you tell if you are lacking in absorption power?? Your fingernails tell a lot about you, take a look at them.  Do you have long vertical striations on them? Are there white spots on them? How about your energy, are you constantly dragging you feet and feeling lethargic? These could be signs that there is some nutritional malabsorption taking place.

Another area where you could be losing a lot of nutrient is in your daily vitamins.  Most of the common vitamins purchasable at your local drug store or grocery store are compacted with binders and fillers. Usually this is shellfish (which is why some people get sick after taking certain vitamins) and chalk. They make these rock hard tablets with such useless ingredients because it’s cheap. Making their bottom dollar better. Chalk and shellfish are very difficult to digest and the contents of such vitamin “pills” are rarely absorbed. I’ve even heard some physicians say that all you get from taking certain multi vitamins is expensive urine!! How true, how true.

Here’s two tips to help those important nutrients get into body and make for very happy cells.

For one, buy your vitamins at a natural health food store and ask the sales associate lots of questions about the contents of each brand your looking to purchase. If they can’t answer your questions… keep moving. As well, take the time to read for yourself. Examine that ingredients list thoroughly. How many of the ingredients can you actually pronounce? If it has a huge list of chemically sounding words, leave it on the shelf. Your vitamins should contain ingredients you’re familiar with or at least ones you don’t need a dictionary to be able to pronounce. Try to purchase gel caps, powders or liquid vitamins. These are easily absorbed.  If you’re buying a tablet, make sure it is Kosher, organic or raw food, as they usually aren’t as compressed and hard as other brands.  Since most cheaper tables are so solidly packed together they usually do not dissolve quickly enough before they get a close up of the toilet water.

Two, to aid in digestion you can do something extremely easy, affordable (actually its free) and safe. CHEW YOUR FOOD. Yep, that’s it, chew your food. Slowly, I might add! To put it plainly, plan to drink your solids and chew your liquids. Amylase is an enzyme formed in the mouth that breaks down carbohydrates (starches). If you don’t chew properly or long enough, you are not giving that enzyme long enough breakdown strength to do its job. Sending large piece of slop down your throat into your stomach. This then slows down your stomach enzymes which are needed to breakdown that oversized 16oz. steak coming down the hatch in a minute. Since you didn’t chew your carbs correctly, its probably safe to say that that nice porterhouse isn’t in bite size pieces either. Huge pieces of meat in the stomach make for a slow transit time. This can cause food in your stomach to putrefy and your nutrients to be destroyed. It can also lead to food allergies. Undigested chunks of food (in this case meat) can seep from your stomach into your blood stream. Since these food chunks shouldn’t be there, the body identifies them as foreign invaders and sends out the troops to attack. It further records such particles as the “bad guys” and tells the body to react and reject them the next time you eat them. Of course this happens over an extended period of time from not chewing properly. Which explains why some people develop allergies to foods in adulthood that never caused them to react as a child!!

So there you have it.  If you want more absorption, buy decent vitamins and minerals and chew your food.  Of course these aren’t the only ways to aid absorption but they’re easy. Since oral consumption is the nutrient ingester of choice, it would do us all well to take a little time at the dinner table and really BE WHAT WE EAT.